Alabama, unless stopped by the courts, intends to strap Kenneth Eugene Smith to a gurney Thursday and use a gas mask to replace breathable air with nitrogen, depriving him of oxygen, in the nation’s first execution attempt with the method.
The Alabama attorney general’s office told federal appeals court judges last week that nitrogen hypoxia is “the most painless and humane method of execution known to man.” But what exactly Smith, 58, will feel after the warden switches on the gas is unknown, some doctors and critics say.
“What effect the condemned person will feel from the nitrogen gas itself, no one knows,” Dr. Jeffrey Keller, president of the American College of Correctional Physicians, wrote in an email. “This has never been done before. It is an experimental procedure.”
Keller, who was not involved in developing the Alabama protocol, said the plan is to “eliminate all of the oxygen from the air” that Smith is breathing by replacing it with nitrogen.
As long as we continue to do this, we should be forced to pull “execution duty” like we can pull jury duty.
Make people come in to press the button that kills the person.
Let’s see how people vote concerning capital punishment after that.
I’d rather pay a professional sociopath a fraction of the cost it would take to jail the inmate for life, to push that button.
Maybe I’m misinterpreting but you don’t seem to have any concern for mistakes in the justice system that incorrectly convict people and subsequently kill them.
Do I have that right?
No I do have that concern too.
I simultaneously also think reprehensible criminals that have been proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt should still be executed.
?
As if before now we didn’t think we were killing people we’d proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt?
I doubt the courts actually did that in the majority of those cases. There could be something said about the criteria used for who’s eligible for execution.
For example some good candidates would be any number of mass shooters still alive in max security prison. These people have dozens of witnesses and security cam footage, and are beyond a reasonable doubt guilty and should be offed.