• Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Nitrogen has been approved as an execution method by three states: Alabama, Mississippi and Oklahoma.

    If something is banned everywhere except those specific states, there’s a 100% likelihood that it’s so heinous that it should never be allowed anywhere under any circumstances.

    • noride@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Euthanasia advocates are generally a compassionate bunch, and nitrogen asphyxiation has been proposed numerous times in that space. I don’t think it’s fair to vilify its usage just because you look down upon the states that have legalized it’s usage in this capacity.

      I’ve also personally blacked out from a lack of oxygen, and I can tell you it was far too sudden for me to comprehend I was about to die, let alone process potential pain.

      I am against capital punishment, but if we’re going to do it, the current methods are far too brutal. We need to be accepting of new alternatives, especially ones that historically have been effective in other contexts.

      • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        nitrogen asphyxiation has been proposed numerous times in that space

        And never approved, for clearly stated reasons.

        I don’t think it’s fair to vilify its usage just because you look down upon the states that have legalized it’s usage

        It’s not that my reason for opposing state-sanctioned torture murder is that I don’t like those states. While I’m sure there are some positive aspects of two of those states, there’s no one thing that those three have in common with ONLY each other that isn’t awful.

        It’s like how Orban and Mohdi are both amongst the worst tyrants in the world, but they agree on very little. That loving Putin is one of the few things they both do is very fitting. Likewise with these three states and nitrogen torture murder.

        • zaplachi@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          I mean how many progressive stars have the death penalty? Most of the pushback towards it is because you could never design an ethical test, and that prisons might make a mistake (such as impure nitrogen).

          Lethal injections have a 7% failure rate, so at least 1 in every 14 executions are already botched.

          “The odds of being tortured to death by lethal injection are pretty substantial. The odds of a botch with nitrogen hypoxia are uncertain,” Dunham told CNN. “I think it’s a choice to avoid a sure bad thing, as opposed to an affirmative embrace of nitrogen hypoxia.”

          These are the same arguments that got the electric chair, and lethal injection approved. So unless we are going back to a firing line (which is practically painless, just messy), why not try to make it more ethical?

          • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            So what you’re saying is, because we know that all the other methods of state murder are inhumane, we should try one we know fuckall about on the extremely slim chance that it MIGHT be any less cruel.

            There’s nothing ethical about murdering humans in the first place and doing it in new completely unknown ways that might be worse and doctors are warning will probably be excruciating makes it much LESS ethical. Maybe we should try NOT murdering for a while, see how we feel about things being more civilized and less dehumanising.

            • zaplachi@lemmy.ca
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              1 year ago

              I mean you’re objectively correct, but those states don’t seem like they’re gonna stop capital punishment anytime soon. If current death row inmates ask to be executed by nitrogen, I don’t think there is any harm in trying.

              • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Doesn’t your back hurt from constantly moving those goalposts?

                Inmates are not asking to be murdered in an untested way that will most likely be excruciating.

                The corrupt and callous governments of three of the worst states want to use nitrogen because it’s cheap, it’s plentiful and that’s all they care about.

                As for “no harm in trying” , what part of “unknown but likely to be excruciating” is it that you fail to understand? Is it that long word at the end? It means roughly “very painful, much ow” 🙄

      • Neuromancer@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        It’s an important distinction. Nitrogen is not banned in other states. It’s not approved.

        It’s used for euthanasia because it’s less painful

        I’m against the death penalty but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be humane.

      • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        In this case, that’s a distinction without consequence. It’s the exact same thing with the direction reversed.

      • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Nitrogen asphyxiation is probably the gentlest and most comfortable method of executing someone I can think of.

        You must not be very imaginative, then. Look to Dignitas, the Swiss nonprofit organization providing physician-assisted suicide. If oxygen deprivation was really the gentlest and most comfortable method of ending a human life, don’t you think that’s what they would do?

        Putting aside for a moment the fact that killing someone on purpose against their will is and always will be murder regardless of whether it’s the government doing it, these three states don’t want to use nitrogen because it’s a gentle method. Everyone with actual medical expertise asked about it say it probably isn’t.

        They want to use nitrogen because it’s cheap and because it’s plentiful enough that people of better morals and ethics than themselves can’t keep them from getting it. Those are the actual reasons no matter their pseudoscientific claims backed up by no evidence.