Witnesses watched through a window at an Alabama prison as Kenneth Eugene Smith became the nation's first person to be put to death using nitrogen gas.
Forced to fight every instinct they have to resist breathing
That’s part of what I mean by botching it. It does require some bit of knowledge about how the body responds physiologically to various gases to prepare for it. I’m not sure if there’s a way to know for sure, but if they didn’t explain that letting him fill his lungs with N2 from the start instead of letting him accumulate CO2, his death would’ve been entirely peaceful. Also, making him fall asleep first would’ve guaranteed that he didn’t fight it. There are various ways of doing that.
Overall I’d prefer this method over any other if I had to choose. I just have a feeling that they could’ve handled it much better than they did from lack of experience and forethought.
But he didn’t want to die. If you don’t want to die – if you aren’t cooperating with the execution – it is going to be torturous with this method.
The attitude of “this is the way I want to die” is automatically assuming that you want to die. That you’re a willing participant. Execution must be presumed to have an uncooperative victim and the humaneness must be judged in that context.
Lot of people saying he should’ve just let it happen. It would’ve hurt him less. That’s unacceptable to say to a victim of violence in any other context, so I’m not sure why it makes sense to people here.
Like I said, there are many ways of making an unwilling person cooperate but there will always be someone arguing the contrary. Just because this didn’t go as expected doesn’t mean it’s a tortuous method. Some convulsing is expected but that doesn’t mean that the person was conscious.
I’m not for the death penalty but I’m glad that more options are being explored and I hope that this is used as a learning experience.
If I’m going to be killed, and I know I have no choice, I will choose this method over anything else any day. Maaaaybe I’ll consider a shotgun blast in the head, or being blown into tiny pieces. But nitrogen or helium seems like the best way to go - for an unwilling but cooperative person like me.
That’s part of what I mean by botching it. It does require some bit of knowledge about how the body responds physiologically to various gases to prepare for it. I’m not sure if there’s a way to know for sure, but if they didn’t explain that letting him fill his lungs with N2 from the start instead of letting him accumulate CO2, his death would’ve been entirely peaceful. Also, making him fall asleep first would’ve guaranteed that he didn’t fight it. There are various ways of doing that.
Overall I’d prefer this method over any other if I had to choose. I just have a feeling that they could’ve handled it much better than they did from lack of experience and forethought.
But he didn’t want to die. If you don’t want to die – if you aren’t cooperating with the execution – it is going to be torturous with this method.
The attitude of “this is the way I want to die” is automatically assuming that you want to die. That you’re a willing participant. Execution must be presumed to have an uncooperative victim and the humaneness must be judged in that context.
Lot of people saying he should’ve just let it happen. It would’ve hurt him less. That’s unacceptable to say to a victim of violence in any other context, so I’m not sure why it makes sense to people here.
Like I said, there are many ways of making an unwilling person cooperate but there will always be someone arguing the contrary. Just because this didn’t go as expected doesn’t mean it’s a tortuous method. Some convulsing is expected but that doesn’t mean that the person was conscious.
I’m not for the death penalty but I’m glad that more options are being explored and I hope that this is used as a learning experience.
If I’m going to be killed, and I know I have no choice, I will choose this method over anything else any day. Maaaaybe I’ll consider a shotgun blast in the head, or being blown into tiny pieces. But nitrogen or helium seems like the best way to go - for an unwilling but cooperative person like me.