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.

ATMORE, Ala. (AP) — As witnesses including five news reporters watched through a window, Kenneth Eugene Smith, who was convicted and sentenced to die in the 1988 murder-for hire slaying of Elizabeth Sennett, convulsed on a gurney as Alabama carried out the nation’s first execution using nitrogen gas.

  • valaramech@kbin.social
    0·
    9 months ago

    From the Wikipedia article on Inert Gas Asphyxiation:

    When humans breathe in an asphyxiant gas, such as pure nitrogen, helium, neon, argon, methane, or any other physiologically inert gas, they exhale carbon dioxide without re-supplying oxygen.

    This leads to asphyxiation (death from lack of oxygen) without the painful and traumatic feeling of suffocation (the hypercapnic alarm response, which in humans arises mostly from carbon dioxide levels rising)

    Unconsciousness in cases of accidental asphyxia can occur within one minute.

    Loss of consciousness may be accompanied by convulsions[9] and is followed by cyanosis and cardiac arrest.

    tl;dr - literally everything that happened in the execution was precisely as expected. Smith did not suffer and was not conscious after the first few minutes of the procedure.

    • bane_killgrind@kbin.social
      0·
      9 months ago

      asphyxiation (death from lack of oxygen) without the painful and traumatic feeling of suffocation (the hypercapnic alarm response

      So this would be fine, but he did have symptoms consistent with hypercapnia, as described in the link you provided

      In severe hypercapnia (generally greater than 10 kPa or 75 mmHg), symptomatology progresses to disorientation, panic, hyperventilation, convulsions, unconsciousness, and eventually death.[8][9]

      They needed a larger breathable volume to diffuse the carbon dioxide present to keep the man from suffering.

      They botched it.

      • valaramech@kbin.social
        0·
        9 months ago

        Considering both include convulsions and cardiac arrest can be accompanied by agonal breathing, I don’t think you can definitively state this.

        Smith also resisted breathing for as long as he could at the beginning of the procedure and I think that needs to be taken into account. I won’t say they absolutely didn’t botch his execution, but I’ve yet to see any compelling evidence to that effect.

        • bane_killgrind@kbin.social
          0·
          9 months ago

          Smith’s lawyers disagree, and seek a court-ordered halt to the second execution attempt, scheduled for 6 p.m. on Thursday. They say the new method, particularly the repurposing of a respirator mask, could easily go wrong if the mask’s seal is imperfect and oxygen seeps in.

          Nitrogen has been advocated for by the right-to-die movement, and used successfully in assisted suicides but is more commonly deployed using a nitrogen-filled hood over the head.

          Smith’s lawyers have also complained about Alabama’s decision to not perform the test outlined in the mask manufacturer’s manual to ensure an airtight seal.

          Unless they published their methodology, which they refused to do, we won’t have any compelling evidence.