Transcript
Alabama suffocated a man to death in a gas chamber tonight after starving him so he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit as they did it. And this was deemed perfectly legal by multiple courts in the vaunted American legal system.
That’s what happens when you value institutions over people.
Link for more info: https://www.reuters.com/legal/alabama-prepares-carry-out-first-execution-by-nitrogen-asphyxiation-2024-01-25/
He wasn’t “starved”, it says right there in the article that he was given his last meal this morning (Thursday) and allowed no solids after 10am because he suffered from nausea and was worried he’d vomit.
It’s okay to be anti-execution but you don’t have to make shit up to be inflammatory, there’s plenty of other valid reasons to be against execution but making sure a man doesn’t choke on his own vomit isn’t one of them.
Plus they’re trying to say he suffocated like it was torture, no they used nitrogen specifically so it didn’t activate the body’s panic response to lack of oxygen. He just fell asleep.
And the reason that works is that your body doesn’t actually detect low oxygen. When you hold your breath for a long time, the sensation comes from high CO2 levels. That’s one reason that working in a hydrogen or helium airship is dangerous, because there can be a leak and you won’t even notice until passing out.
Shout out to Project Hail Mary for educating millions about this.
Also he specifically requested that they used nitrogen over other methods.
He later changed his request to death by firing squad, but I suspect that may have been a delaying tactic rather than an actual preference.
Also leaving out the fact that the executed and his lawyer both said this method was preferential to lethal injection.
eyewitness accounts disagree
"Smith’s spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeff Hood, who’d previously expressed concern that the method could be inhumane, witnessed the execution and described it in more graphic terms, saying it was ‘the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen.’
Smith, wearing a tight-fitting mask that covered his entire face, convulsed when the gas was turned on, ‘popped up on the gurney’ repeatedly, and gasped, heaved and spat, Hood said.
‘It was absolutely horrific,’ he said."
“Smith, who was on a gurney, appeared conscious for “several minutes into the execution,” and “shook and writhed” for about two minutes after that, media witnesses said in a joint report.”
https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/26/us/alabama-execution-nitrogen-what-we-know/index.html
Which is so much better than injectables, which ARE torture. They get injected with a tranq first so they don’t show signs of struggle or pain when the actual death shot is given.
Witnesses described writhing:
They think he was holding his breath, so the CO2 concentration in his blood would have risen. Between the CO2 build up and just knowing you are about to be killed, it’s not surprising he started panicking and writhing.
That’s what people miss when touting nitrogen asphyxiation as humane. It’s only humane if the person being killed willingly gives themselves over to the process and takes nice deep breaths. If they’re not willing to die of course they’re still going to resist to the best of their abilities and try and get the mask off.
They should just fill his chamber up with nitrogen on a random day of the week while he’s asleep
A man is sentenced to death on Sunday and told he will be executed on a day in the upcoming week, but it will be a surprise that he will not see coming. He reasons he cannot be executed on the next Sunday, since if he made it to Saturday and was still alive, he would know he was being executed on Sunday since it’s the last day. Because he cannot be executed on Sunday, Saturday becomes the last day and he reasons he can’t be executed then either. He follows this logic all the way down to Monday and concludes that he will not be executed.
He was executed on Tuesday and was very surprised.
At least part of that was attributed to him holding his breath for as long as possible once they started administrating the gas.
I totally get the impulse, but breathing in nitrogen wasn’t the thing that would harm him. It’s just lack of oxygen, which holding your breath isn’t going to help.
Legal execution is fucking sickening, It’s horrifying that we did that to him.
What’s even more sickening is him stabbing that woman to death, can you imagine how much fear and pain she went through?
Yes, and 2 wrongs make a right of course. /s
Or maybe it’s about vengeance and not about paying a due to society?
It is about vengeance and also about not perpetually providing room and board for someone who lost their rights when they decided to take someone else’s rights to life away.
Edit: why would they have an inalienable right to life, even if it is a meager life in prison, if they decided they can takeinnocent people’s lives for their own deranged reasons?
That’s easy to answer. Justice is not perfect, and sooner or later you will execute an innocent person. We know this has happened in the UK, because DNA evidence proved that the person couldn’t have been there, and they would have been released had they not been executed.
Death is final and you don’t just respawn at your bed, so this is the worst possible outcome. Abolishing the death penalty avoids this terrible situation, and yes it means you keep people like this alive until their natural death, but it also maximises the chance that new evidence can be found that proves that person didn’t in fact commit the crime.