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.
Witnesses described writhing:
Smith appeared to remain conscious for several minutes after the nitrogen was activated, according to five journalists who were allowed to watch the execution through glass as media witnesses. Although the mask was also secured to the gurney, he then began shaking his head and writhing for about two minutes, and then could be seen breathing deeply for several minutes before his breathing slowed and became imperceptible, the witnesses said.
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?
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.
He just fell asleep.
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
Also leaving out the fact that the executed and his lawyer both said this method was preferential to lethal injection.
Honestly, if I were to choose suicide, I’d go for a nitrogen slumber. Seems like a painless way to go.
They didn’t seem to do it correctly and it took a while. It described in the article but it is horrible.
Death penalty in the US and not doing it correctly, name a more fitting duo
Crazy how as our methods of execution get easier to watch, they get more torturous to the individual. Give me a firing squad or a guillotine any day. Y’all lethal inject me, I’m haunting your asses
Interesting video, indeed worth a watch.
People just… go to watch executions?
It sounds like he tried to hold his breath, not that they did it incorrectly.
Hmm, I think I’d choose “cocaine overdose”.
Sounds fun but it would be a horrible way to die.
2 grams of heroin would be the way to go I would think
I have no plans now, but maybe I’ll try that during the sunset of my life…
Why not both! Speedball your way out like all the other greats!
Really just 2 grams ? And nothing else ?
10? 100? Idc, shit is cheap.
Maybe just let them go full Tony Montana?
Too dangerous. You might mis-judge the amount and just end up having a good time.
It’s the way the suicide pods work, apparently
It’s literally the way I wanna die. How many Alabama Republicans do I gotta do in to get done in like this?
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“Starving?”
I bet surgeons hate you
Yeah, I was STARVED so I could have my wisdom teeth removed!
The death penalty is a reason not to consider the USA a civilized country.
Among many. Extrajudicial Executions are far more common than official ones. And the police rob more money of people than all other criminals combined (excluding white collar crime, of course). So yeah, totally civilised.
And the death penalty is not legal in many states, but cops murdering people in the streets is legal in all 50.
Literal whataboutism:
What about Japan?
Th crimes these inmates committed are so fucking despicably heinous, and yet the government wants to kill them in the most humane manner and you think that makes them not civilized?
The problem with that is that the government decided I did a crime. A pretty bad one. I didn’t do it. There’s no convincing anyone that I didn’t do it even though there’s zero evidence(because I didn’t do it). Now I have a felony.
I’m certain this happens to anyone the police decide not to like.
The government regularly executes wrongly convicted people in our name. That’s enough of a reason to ban the death penalty. Even if we granted that some people deserve to die, the government is going to get it wrong with some degree of regularity.
Going beyond that, the justice system should be about preventing crime, not inflicting punishment. So yes, if there’s going to be a death penalty, it’s right to take every possible step to make it humane.
I was not talking about this case in particular but yes, of course I do think that. The method or killing makes no difference at all. There are several reasons for my position. Just a few:
The death penalty violates basic human rights.
The perpetrators are in prison and therefore no longer pose a threat to anyone. That means killing them now would be nothing more than an unnecessary cruelty, based on a medieval understanding of the law, which is based on the idea of revenge.
One murder cannot make up for another murder. The victim is dead and killing the murderers will not bring her back.
Governments should not kill people and in general, killing is wrong and should be avoided. Exceptions might be certain situations of self defense, which are rare.
In countries that still have the death penalty, it also regularly happens that innocent people are executed. In the USA for example, this happens more frequently to black people, the reason being racism in the police and justice system.
Sennett was found dead in her home March 18, 1988, with eight stab wounds in the chest and one on each side of her neck. Smith was one of two men convicted in the killing. The other, John Forrest Parker, was executed in 2010.
Prosecutors said they were each paid $1,000 to kill Sennett on behalf of her pastor husband, who was deeply in debt and wanted to collect on insurance.
Yes, a complete barbarian. We have them too, but we aspire to be better than just being equally barbaric in return. That’s why civilisations do justice, not revenge.
I’m good with revenge.
Chances are, an innocent person has been killed because of the death penalty. That alone has me against it entirely.
That’s a chance we are just going to have to take.
How many innocent people are you ok with murdering before it’s no longer worth it?
Last I checked the guy they Nitrogen’d wasn’t innocent.
How many guilty killers are you ok with escaping punishment?
I am ok with every guilty killer not being executed if it means saving a single innocent person. Note that I did not say that I am ok with them being released.
I ask again, how many innocent people are you ok with murdering before it’s no longer worth it?
Do they just let them go free if they don’t execute them?
Apt username.
“It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer” - William Blackstone.
Buddy are you so deprived of empathy that you have no problem with sending innocent people to their deaths? Are you okay with cops playing judge, jury, and executioner? Lot of innocent people die from cops deciding that its okay if that guy is dead.
No, I’m happy to send this guy to meet his maker.
Literally avoided my questions. Why are you okay sending someone who is innocent to death?
what if it happens to you or your family? then is it still worth it?
I don’t see any “have to” in here at all. To me, that just looks like a desire to have the state murder people. That’s not justice.
I think executing someone who was convicted of murder is justified.
Elizabeth Sennett’s family can now know some peace. Don’t take it from me, feel free to read their direct quotes below:
_What was the stance of the victim’s family? “Some of these people out there say, ‘Well, he doesn’t need to suffer like that,’” Charles Sennett Jr., one of Ms. Sennett’s sons, told the local station WAAY31 this month. “Well, he didn’t ask Mama how to suffer. They just did it. They stabbed her multiple times.” Another son, Michael Sennett, told NBC News in December that he was frustrated that the state had taken so long to carry out an execution that the judge ordered decades ago.
“It doesn’t matter to me how he goes out, so long as he goes,” he said, noting that Mr. Smith had been in prison “twice as long as I knew my mom.”_
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/25/us/execution-alabama-kenneth-smith.html
Who’s moving goalposts now? A decision being “justified” doesn’t mean it’s “a chance we have to take.”
How is that a morally coherent stance? You’re basically condoning state-sanctioned murder.
I’ve made it clear in multiple posts. I’m on the side of justice.
We don’t have to, though. We can just put them in prison.
Or we can execute the guilty, either way is fine with me.
even for 1988 thats not a huge chunk of money. poverty is the biggest driver of crime. imagine if we reinvested all the money we pour into prisons into actually taking care of people
Yeah, and you know what stuck out to me in the article? That the conservative justices said, he was “gaming the system” for too long with…appeals and requests for stays…and that justice wasn’t done until he was murdered.
Like…he was gaming the system by rotting in prison? So these arbiters of justice think justice is only an eye for an eye and these prisons they adore so much are not brutal enough?
Sounds like the husband killed her with his wallet. He wielded this guy like the guy wielded a knife.
It’s absurd to think that killing him would really bring any more peace to the children than destroying the knife.
If anything, having to bear witness to endless appeals and proceedings for 35 years prolongs their torture. I’d really like to see a form of justice that focuses on ensuring the peace and stability of the victims and their family rather than the pain and suffering of the perpetrators.
Two eyes for one eye?
Edit: maybe I’ve been misunderstood.
Better go after every hospital for “starving” patients before surgery
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And this was after botching a first execution where the execution team had some questionable judgement
Bluntly, choking on your own vomit is probably a really terrible way to die. If I recall correctly he was put in a chamber where the majority of the air in the room was replaced with nitrous oxide, asphyxiating the subject. If he had choked on his vomit, it would have been closer to drowning than suffocating in the manner that was intended.
By asphyxiating him in this way, his suffering was effectively eliminated during the execution; but if he had vomited and choked on it… Well, I don’t know if you’ve ever found yourself short of air in a body of water, but it’s a pretty unpleasant experience. It only gets worse as you get closer to death when drowning (from what I’ve heard/understood from people who have nearly drown).
The intention of not giving him food so he didn’t vomit, was a humane decision, not intended for additional suffering and cruelty.
Twisting the intent like this is doing a disservice to the entire process. You can dislike capital punishment all you want, and I may even agree that it shouldn’t be done, but the fact is, this statement is misleading at best. I’m all for a healthy discussion on it, but let’s not conflate the issue with these misconceptions.
He took 22 minutes or so to die. Guards in the room said it was awful to watch. His suffering was INCREASED by using this untested method. But then that was surely the point…
The great performative irony of the death penalty is that the swiftest, most merciful death is that by firing squad, but it looks violent and brutal and so increasingly cruel and elaborate alternatives are sought.
Firing squad deaths are prone to human error and could be painful in the final moments leading up to death. Imagine someone accidentally (or on purpose) shoots the subject in the leg or arm instead of the chest. And the subject is awake right up until death.
In contrast, nitrogen asphyxiation is way more humane. It is not reliant on human skill in the way that firing squads are, and the subject loses consciousness before dying.
Didn’t Dr Kevorkian come up with a couple humane methods for assisted suicide? I don’t think we should have the death penalty, but couldn’t one of those be used?
