Alabama is seeking to put a second inmate to death using nitrogen gas, a move that comes a month after the state carried out the first execution using the controversial new method.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall’s office asked the state Supreme Court on Wednesday to set an execution date for Alan Eugene Miller. The state said Miller’s execution would be carried out using nitrogen. Miller, now 59, was convicted of killing three people during a pair of 1999 workplace shootings in suburban Birmingham.
“The State of Alabama is prepared to carry out the execution of Miller’s sentence by means of nitrogen hypoxia,” the attorney general’s office wrote, adding that Miller has been on death row since 2000 and that it is time to carry out his sentence.
They’re trying to sneak in as much cruelty and obscenity as possible before the next generation gets into power and tries making everything fair and compassionate.
I was thinking a very similar thought just yesterday. So many of our major problems feel so much like old people being unable to die gracefully. “Well, fine, then I’ll do as much damage as I can on the way out!” rather than, “I’d like this place to be better for my kids and grandkids when I’m gone.”
I think part of it is their brain shutting down, inhibiting reasoning as they get older and as they come to terms with the fact they really are on the way out, they become more conservative and selfish while they still can.
Reverting into baby mode where they think their wants and needs supercede those of others.
Looks like Alabama is run by non-intelligent life forms. Because one key feature of intelligence is to be able to learn from past mistakes.
Meanwhile I’m still waiting for America to drop capital punishment
Nah. You need it after a Civil War. Not using it the last time to hang the Confederate officers really fucked us over in the long run.
Disappointing to see from Alabama.
I feel like Alabama has been making some high profile bad decisions lately
It all starts with conservatism and attacks on education
Not-so-sweet home Alabama
I mean, we could, maybe not be killing people, but that failing, if they do it right the victim just euphorically slumbers away into death. It’s not that hard you just give them nitrogen to breathe. How the f*** can they screw this up?
I always thought suicide bags with nitrogen or helium were the way to go. I didn’t read why the last guy had such a miserable death, but I did read it wasn’t pretty.
I feel like they could put someone under some anesthesia and finish the job with the gas. Or even better, don’t kill people, like you said.
Generalized convulsions are a pretty well-established effect of nitrogen toxicity.
“In the few experiments in which nitrogen was breathed for 17–20 sec unconsciousness supervened and was accompanied on most occasions by a generalized convulsion.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inert_gas_asphyxiation
Known in the scuba diving world as “getting narced” (nitrogen narcosis)
https://www.scuba.com/blog/dealing-nitrogen-narcosis-2/
“In severe cases, divers have been known to experience convulsions, possibly causing loss of consciousness in extreme cases.”
Nitrogen Asphyxiation in the workplace is insanely dangerous specifically because humans (and most animals) don’t have a way to detect nitrogen displacement…
The body detects hypoxia by build up of CO2, or more accurately carbonic acid, not loss of O2 - it doesn’t expect for nitrogen to be the thing to displace all the oxygen, so you literally don’t notice it. There’s countless stories of people fainting and dying due to not realising the situation they were in.
So how in fuck’s name did Alabama manage to botch it so badly that the first guy had an agonising death via seizure?? It takes a special kind of neglect to make that happen.
They put him in a mask instead of a sealed room. The mask filled with CO2, and may have not had a perfect seal due to thrashing as he struggled to breathe.
There are ways the masks could have worked but really to do this kind of thing humanly you need a sealed chamber with enough volume for CO2 to diffuse into or some kind of scrubber at the bottom pulling air out and displaced with pure N2 at the top.
It’s difficult to tell if they are using the setup they are because of incompetence trying to seek out the cheapest solution, or malice and using the cheapest solution that will cause the maximum agony and suffering. It’s pretty bad when bringing back hanging would be a more humane way of executing people than this travesty.
I don’t understand how they even fucked it up. You have a very shallow mask with positive pressure from the nitrogen gas and a valve that opens when there is any extra pressure. Person breathes out CO2 and some nitrogen gas is expelled, person breathes in, almost only Nitrogen gas is inhaled. Am I missing something? I am not an engineer, but this seems like a way you could do it.
Congratulations, you’re now the mayor of Alabama.
Well that makes sense - without any exhaust, the volume of nitrogen available wouldn’t properly displace the air from his lungs before he put the mask in…
So he could’ve essentially just died from regular asphyxiation, which is quite painful, with a side of nitrogen.
Yes, that’s what happened. He was tortured to death for over 20 minutes.
Why don’t they apply anesthesia first? If I can get conked out so bad that I can’t remember getting my wisdom teeth removed wouldn’t that totally knock you out before being gassed?
If they can’t properly enact what should’ve been a painless execution, how do you expect them to properly anesthetise someone?
Isn’t the danger of improperly applying anesthesia that you could kill someone?
Of an overdose sure, but if they botch it the other way, there’s a good possibility the prisoner never properly goes under or they wake up during the execution, either way experiencing the full pain of death.
That I’d figure is the worse of the results, and likely the one that’d happen given these guys seem to have a knack for torturous executions.
Isn’t that still better than no anesthesia at all? Assuming that the execution method wasn’t changed to be worse.
Technically speaking yes, but that assumes they’re treated the same. It’s almost certain that if the executioners are under the illusion their anesthesia has worked, they’re not going to do things in such a way as to minimise pain.
Prisons seem determined to turn executions into torture sessions - and while the need for capital punishment can be debated all day, we can all agree that the death is supposed to be the punishment, not the procedure.
Done properly, the nitrogen is basically an anesthesiac. It knocks you out real good.
Because that would make a lot of sense, but the world doesn’t work that way
The cruelty is the point
You need a medic to administer the anesthesia and no medic is going to participate on that.
That’s because if you mess it up you could kill somebody
Pharmaceutical companies will not supply those kinds of drugs for executions, because they understandably don’t want their products associated with killing people.
I think it just didn’t end up working as well as scientists thought it would. Maybe there’s more to painless nitrogen execution besides just filling a container with nitrogen. It’s not like they can just test a nitrogen death chamber before rolling it out. We’ll see if the next execution goes the same way or not.
Alabama did not listen to scientists. Medical science understands the roles of oxygen, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen quite well, and predicted that filling a mask with nitrogen would be a horrible application of the technology. The mask did not ventilate his own breathe, so the high concentrations of nitrogen did not displace the oxygen and carbon dioxide fast enough to avoid the gasping asphyxiation reflex.
There were specific recommendations made by scientists. Either use a mask with a one-way valve that exhausts exhalation, or fill a chamber of sufficient volume that will render the concentrations of his own exhalation insignificant. Alabama did neither, and it was a disaster.
I think the problem was that they didn’t actually use a chamber and instead tried to use a mask, IIRC
I think there’s a few contextual factors…
If someone doesn’t know they’re being asphyxiated with nitrogen they might just pass out.
If someone wants to euthanise themselves by nitrogen asphyxiation they might just drift off peacefully.
… but if someone doesn’t want to die and knows they’re being asphyxiated it’s probably not going to be so peaceful.
Alabama this week:
“All life is sacred in the eyes of God!!!”
“Gas that motherfucker til his eyes bleed!!”
I hope nobody in charge watches Deadpool and sees how he got his powers.
But not in a chamber or anything, we’re gonna fuck it up with a mask and bottles of nitrogen and shit
I’m an opponent of the death penalty in general, but I’ve always felt that if a state is going to execute someone anyway and I can’t stop that then at least they should be using inert gas asphyxiation. Because only a drooling moron could possibly mess that up and cause the process to be painful somehow.
Alabama once again manages to impress.
as if they didn’t fuck up the first one enough, they’re gonna do it AGAIN?? At this point I think we should follow in the footsteps of the Brazen Bull.
Stories allege after finishing construction on the execution device, Perilaus said to Phalaris: “His screams will come to you through the pipes as the tenderest, most pathetic, most melodious of bellowings.” Perilaus believed he would receive a reward for his invention. Instead, Phalaris, who was disgusted by these words, ordered its horn sound system to be tested by Perilaus himself, tricking him into getting in the bull. When Perilaus entered, he was immediately locked in and the fire was set, so that Phalaris could hear the sound of his screams. Before Perilaus could die, Phalaris opened the door and took him away. After freeing him from the bull, Phalaris is then said to have taken Perilaus to the top of a hill and thrown him off, killing him.
They fucked it up, yes. Should they do the same procedure, no. Should they still use nitrogen executions, one of the least painful ways to die, yes, assuming you support executions at all.
Those of you who read the news and watch it on TV know this already, but the execution last month by nitrogen gas was carried out AT THE REQUEST of the guy who was being executed. He wanted to be executed by nitrogen hypoxia, it was something he felt strongly about.
And according to the AG who witnessed the process, it went really smoothly and was much less horrific than many other methods of execution.
That’s interesting. I wonder what the differences are between nitrogen hypoxia and helium hypoxia (an increasingly popular suicide method).
I imagine none, unless you try to speak. They both do the same thing. Displace oxygen. Your body can’t detect either element.
Very little, only that helium is often supplied premixed with a little CO2 so you feel awful and stop instead of killing yourself
Oh, I didn’t know that. I suppose it’s a matter of public safety at that point. Though it does sort of force a person who is intent on dying to use an alternative method that may be more violent and/or public.
Which Southern state is going to be the first one to livestream executions?
100 bits to add another 10 volts to the chair
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They would get more money if they had an option to vote. 100 bits to vote whether it adds or reduces volts. People are gonna fight on whether they want the person to die quickly fried or slowly and painfully with a lower voltage.
