cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/14097254
Smith’s execution by “nitrogen hypoxia” took around 22 minutes, according to media witnesses, who were led into a viewing room at the William C Holman correctional facility in Atmore shortly before 8 pm local time.
After the nitrogen gas began flowing, Smith convulsed on the gurney for several minutes. The state had previously said the nitrogen gas would cause Smith to lose consciousness in seconds and die within minutes, according to the Associated Press.
“I’ve been to four previous executions and I’ve never seen a condemned inmate thrash in the way that Kenneth Smith reacted to the nitrogen gas,” Lee Hedgepeth, a journalist who witnessed the execution, told the BBC’s Newsday programme.
Why on earth is nitrogen being treated as worse than the gas chamber, electric chair, or lethal injection? All of those are way more painful, akin to torture. Nitrogen suffocation is literally the method that was selected for suicide pods because it doesn’t involve any discomfort (aside from, obviously, the knowledge that you’re going to die.)
It turns out there is discomfort involved when the mechanism for delivery doesn’t account for the CO2 being exhaled. Nitrogen isn’t the problem, but the way they did it was completely asinine.
So what you’re saying is they didn’t scrub the CO2 that he expelled and so he basically rebreathed that, triggering the brainstem signal of hypercapnia?
Wouldn’t this be resolved by having a tube with a slight negative pressure (like reverse cpap) linked to his nose for exhalation while the nitrogen was pumped via the mouth upon inhalation?
Well that’s terrible enough, but I thought this method of execution was the prisoner’s own choice? Wasn’t he the one campaigning to be executed by nitrogen gas in the first place? I know they tried to execute him once before by lethal injection and spent four hours trying unsuccessfully to get the needle into his veins.
So maybe 22 minutes isn’t so inhumane compared to 4 hours of being stabbed with a needle. Not that any death is ever a pleasant experience.
