Many states in the US that still have the death penalty are finding it hard to find ways to execute people. Apart from the recorded cases of being unable to find veins into which the lethal drugs are delivered, the manufacturers of those drugs, not wishing to be associated with this death industry, are refusing to supply the drugs. But those states that are determined to retain the death penalty are now seeking other ways, even suggesting that we bring back hanging or the electric chair or the firing squad.
One method that is gaining vogue is to use nitrogen gas to essentially asphyxiate people. Given that nitrogen is so plentiful and makes up about 80% of the air around us, it would seem that getting access to it would be easy. But apparently it has to be bought from medical suppliers and three top suppliers that provide medical nitrogen are balking at having their product be used by the death industry.
Three of the largest manufacturers of medical-grade nitrogen gas in the US have barred their products from being used in executions, following Alabama’s recent killing of the death row inmate Kenneth Smith using a previously untested method known as nitrogen hypoxia.
The three companies have confirmed to the Guardian that they have put in place mechanisms that will prevent their nitrogen cylinders falling into the hands of departments of correction in death penalty states. The move by the trio marks the first signs of corporate action to stop medical nitrogen, which is designed to preserve life, being used for the exact opposite – killing people.
The green shoots of a corporate blockade for nitrogen echoes the almost total boycott that is now in place for medical drugs used in lethal injections. That boycott has made it so difficult for death penalty states to procure drugs such as pentobarbital and midazolam that a growing number are turning to nitrogen as an alternative killing technique.
Now, nitrogen producers are engaging in their own efforts to prevent the abuse of their products. The march has been led by Airgas, which is owned by the French multinational Air Liquide.
…Alabama has shrouded the source of its nitrogen in secrecy, in the hope of obscuring its supply lines and avoiding the kind of boycott that has troubled lethal injection drugs. If it became known that its gas was industrial quality and not approved for human use, that could lead to major legal challenges and puncture its public posture that nitrogen hypoxia is a humane way to end life.
Almost invariably, raising this topic results in discussions about which method of executing people is the most quick and painless, which strikes me as macabre. For me, the obvious solution to this problem would be to abolish the death penalty altogether. It is a barbaric relic of earlier times that any decent society should be ashamed to be part of.
I totally agree that the death penalty should be abolished.
Those people who claim to believe in the Bible know that it says that god said: vengeance is MINE.
But to them, their infinitely powerful god is unable to act, so the verse must mean that vengeance is THINE or that it is FINE. So much for obeying the supposedly holy word. They can’t be sure what their words mean, but they are sure that a god exists who can’t do anything.
Unfortunately, someday, redneck prisons will realize that their maintenance welders can easily get welders’ nitrogen, or some other evil way to demonstrate their “morality”. Sad!
Irony was legally executed when all the states that are trying to find ways to execute people are ALSO trying to keep fentanyl out of the hands of the electorate. For reasons.
I guess giving the about to be departed a glass of bourbon and some fentanyl is not complicated enough or cruel enough.
Marcus Ranum @ # 2: I guess giving the about to be departed a glass of bourbon and some fentanyl is not complicated enough or cruel enough.
Based on no surveys or research at all (except for most of a lifetime spent in the US Deep South), I suggest the reason(s) why prisoner-killing states don’t just reach into the nearest confiscated-drugs locker for guaranteed lethal overdoses involves a poorly-thought-out (of course) expectation among the general redneck population that druggies, looking for a final high, will go on killing sprees just to get that ultimate rush.
How about a Biblical solution??? Slow drowning seems to be very effective — even works on babies (and who doesn’t like to torture babies?)! Or how about stoning? Works great on sluts. Or, and I’m not too clear on the mechanics here, turn those disobedient women into pillars of salt)!
If we’re really looking for “humane” ways to kill people, maybe we should just stick to bullets in backs of heads. That would, at the very least, destroy the brain before it could receive any sort of pain signals. Drugs and gases and such may not cause physical pain, but the recipient still KNOWS and FEELS they’re dying. Quite frankly, if I have to be killed, and get to choose the means, I’m really not sure I’d prefer lethal injection or nitrogen over just a quick shot in the head.
And you can bet the bullet makers won’t refuse to sell to any state “corrections” agencies. Or, it would be hilariously entertaining if they did.
But, yeah, it won’t really hurt to do away with capital punishment. The only exception I can think of would be for acts of high treason that result in significant numbers of Americans getting killed.
They’re not. They’re looking for plausibly-deniable cruelty.
Raging Bee @ 5
Why? What makes high treason worse than just making laws that mean people starve or die of pregnamcy complications? And what makes American deaths so much more significant than those of other nations?
Maybe leave a gun with one bullet in the cell and show daytime television and/or crappy old TV ‘comedy’ until the will to live has been expunged. Swedish TV comedy is quality on a par with the Star Wars Xmas special.
BTW the last execution in Sweden took place 1912 (they had finally bought a guillotine, but it was only used once).
Since capital punishment is essential to maintain order Sweden was the inspiration for the Mad Max films. Not.
Unfortunately, a ban on selling nitrogen to “correction departments” (very misleading name, that) can be easily circumvented by them buying nitrogen generators. And it would be the ultimate irony if a correction department then gasses themselves.
I hope that manufacturers of such equiment will follow suit and not sell equipment for this purpose.
It does not have to be bought from medical suppliers.
It does not have to be bought at all. As you point out, the stuff is all around us and is most of every breath we take. A simple pressure-swing adsorbtion plant will convert breathable air into asphyxiant nitrogen for as long as you’re ever likely to need. Or just oxygen deplete by, oh, I don’t know, burning something in a vessel? There’s no shortage of methods for generating an asphyxiant atmosphere, if your country is enough of a barbarian shithole to require such things.
Pretending that it has to be bought from medical suppliers is pure window-dressing and just makes an already barbaric practice look like it’s being administrated by people who never graduated primary school.
I’ve mentioned this before, but again in case you missed it: inert gases, usually but not exclusively nitrogen, are widely used in the process industries to prevent the formation of flammable atmosphere inside chemical plants. It’s a serious risk to the operators and is taken very seriously, because there have been many, many fatalities. It’s because of the near misses that we know, for certain, that nitrogen asphyxia is painless and quick to bring on unconsciousness in an unwitting victim. The US, of course, prefers to employ psychological torture by making the execution into a theatrical event to make the victim suffer more (the suffering isn’t a side effect, it’s pretty much the entire point), but even the enormous power of the US government can’t make nitrogen asphyxia physically painful.
Another repeated anecdote: you don’t even need nitrogen. One account of a process industry fatality that stuck in my mind was that of a water tank that needed something doing inside it. The manway on top was opened up to let air in, and the water was run out of the tank to drain. So… tank full of air, right? The people who wrote and signed on to the work permit thought so. They didn’t bother with oxygen monitors. The air rushed into the tank… and the oxygen in the air almost immediately depleted because it was being used up oxidising the previously unrusted wall of the tank. IIRC first man in died, second man saw him go down, went in to get him and died too. This has historically been a common event in inert atmosphere asphyxiations. In fact the onset of unconsciousness is sometimes SO quick and painless that at work I’m not even allowed to stick my head in to an open manway for a look around without checking first that the atmosphere inside is breathable -- people have done that, passed out, and asphyxiated right out in the open, in an apparently well-ventilated place, because the inside of the vessel was just nitrogen, and it knocked them out in seconds.
Don’t mess with nitrogen kids. And if you’ve any choice, don’t live somewhere that uses it to kill people deliberately.
“approved for human use”… sheesh
It should have to be a guillotine. That doesn’t dress up what’s happening. It calls a spade a spade.
Industrial quality… does that mean the prisoner might get cancer from the gas he is executed by?
Morphine or fentanyl would do the job, but I assume the pro-death sentence crowd thinks that would be too peaceful. Shooting or decapitation would do the job but would be too obviously brutal. The whole thing is collapsing under its own contradictions.
What this tells me is that the people ordering the executions know less than your typical child about human physiology and respiration. Which also tells me they shouldn’t be in charge of a paper clip let alone a prison.
Maybe this whole medical nitrogen thing is a subtle protest.
“I’m sorry Warden, we can’t get the medical nitrogen necessary to perform the execution. You’ll have to post-pone it.”
It’s strange that they haven’t resorted to shooting. Not enough willing executioners?
And what makes American deaths so much more significant than those of other nations?
Where did I imply anything like that? I certainly never said America should be the only country that punishes traitors.
Raging Bee
You specifically mention Americans, this suggests that should a particular act of treason happen to kill a lot of non-Americans you wouldn’t call for the death penalty.
More to the point you haven’t explained why treason should be an exception, would you do so please?
The judicial death spectacle is designed to have multiple steps for maximizing profit and public consumption. The more complex and esoteric the procedure the better. They may not be televised, but the dates, leadups, methods, complications, and results are thoroughly discussed, even with glee by some. Performative somberness by officials, what the last meal was, what victims or their representatives observed, what religious rites were performed or functionary was on site, etc. All these cost money, and the facilities required for all of this does, too. The justice-industrial complex for the win…
@Jazzlet, 18: i think you may have high expectations where they’re not warranted.
You’re gazing at a magic eye mage waiting for the hidden picture to resolve, but you’ve been duped -- there’s no picture there, just noise. Reading RB’s contributions becomes easier once you understand that.
What an incredible passage. Wouldn’t want to accidentally dose someone with something unsafe1!!!!!11
@ 20 sonofrojblake
Inadvertantly, this is a great metaphor for anti-intellectualism.
“I could never see the 3D image in a ‘magic eye’ picture, therefore everyone else was wrong, and there was never anything but noise.”
Therefore, I will insult anyone for whom the 3D picture is as plain as day as drinking “kool-aid”.
Perfect portrait of anti-feminist, anti-woke, anti-gay, anti-trans dickheads. X-D
“I’m too stupid to get it, so anyone who gets it is lying.”
(This is an aside -- I don’t think “traitors” should be executed. Just a comment on sonofroj’s telling conservative mindset.)
Don’t tell any of the redneck states how easy it is to produce carbon monoxide.
I’m not a fan of capital punishment, though I do think there are some crimes where it is warranted.
Josef Mengele
Jeffrey Dahmer
Ted Bundy
Ed Gein
I find no immorality in offing anybody that fits into the category of gleeful mass murderer or serial killer.
They are undeserving of life.
@mjr, 23: the difference there is that CO poisoning is not the quick and painless thing that N2 asphyxia is.
Oh, hang on, yes, I see what you mean…
@ Tethys, 24: I think you’ve already, elsewhere, stated that you have no problem with murdering innocent people, but thanks for repeating that position again. It’s helpful to be able to write off your opinion as that of someone with no moral standing.
sonofrojblake @20
That doesn’t exempt them from being challenged to my mind. I don’t expect great results, but do feel that state murder for any reason is unacceptable, so if I’ve got the spoons I’ll put those questions. On which note . . .
Tethys @24
What makes those people so exceptional that killing them is acceptable?
I find the idea that killing people is the ultimate retribution or punishment to be bizarre, what is worse ceasing to exist -- and there by feeling nothing -- or having your liberty taken away for a very long time or even until you die naturally? Just on retribution grounds, weak and inappropriate as they are, I am continually bemused at how many people think some particular class of criminal should be killed. It just isn’t logical, which I know I shouldn’t expect, but still do.
sonofrojblake, your gotcha attempt is extremely silly and fatally flawed.
(“the category of gleeful mass murderer or serial killer” ∉ “innocent people”)
I’m not bemused that people are cruel and stupid, nor that they are happy, like Tethys, to state that they are clearly and distinctly so there can be no doubt.
I am bemused that such people manage to find each other and tolerate each other enough to breed.
The supreme irony of course being that chemicals “for food use” may well be even less pure than chemicals sold as general laboratory reagents; since it would take a much smaller amount of almost any impurity to ruin an experiment than it would take to harm a person.
If any crime at all justified the death penalty, polluting the environment in which other people have to live certainly would; crimes involving mere property absolutely would not (your property is worth less than the life of the person trying to steal it). However, the impossibility of post facto rectification of any mistake should be enough to rule it out from any civilised nation.
What lawmaker says: “executions should be reserved for the most vile crimes”.
What people hear: “some people need killing” (goes out and murders someone).
.
We need to make the act of killing taboo, so viscerally repugnant that even drunks and people high on PCP don’t escalate to killing when they fight.
To achieve this, there should be no exceptions apart for military self-defence.
So capital punishment -- simply by existing- lowers the bar for lethal violence.
Thought experiment: most Americans don’t know if Anders Brievik is alive or dead at this moment. If you knew he was alive would that fact bother you? And if you believed he was dead would it make you feel better?
In terms of murderousness, Breivik was nothing compared to Bush jr or Kissinger.
@Marcus #31:
It doesn’t bother me knowing that he’s alive, but I wouldn’t care if he was executed either. I think of the sorrow and anger of the relatives of his victims, and I sympathise with them. If they want him gone, why go against their wishes? Mass murderers and serial killers are just dangerous animals, they have lost all human value. Preserve them if you must, but not at any cost. I disagree that there’s a moral imperative to do so.
Similarly those that murdered innocents in the concert hall in Russia. Torture is an atrocity (and those that were caught clearly have been, which is reprehensible), but if a decision was made to execute them relatively swiftly and painlessly, have at it.
Similarly Putin. His “special military operation” against Ukraine clearly makes him a mass murderer in my eyes. It wouldn’t concern me at all if he was executed because of it. But it doesn’t bother me that he’s alive, it bothers me that he hasn’t been brought to justice, and never will be. But if he were brought to trial, found guilty and sentenced for his crimes, I would be fully satisfied -- I don’t need him to be executed, I just wouldn’t care if he was.
Also:
(Ed Gein, I don’t know enough about)
Jazzlet:
You specifically mention Americans, this suggests that should a particular act of treason happen to kill a lot of non-Americans you wouldn’t call for the death penalty.
If a particular act that killed non-Americans rose to the level of treason as defined in the US Constitution, then yeah, I’d be okay with executing the perpetrators. I suppose Nixon & Kissinger’s sabotaging of LBJ’s peace deal with South Vietnam might qualify here.
More to the point you haven’t explained why treason should be an exception, would you do so please?
“Ordinary” murders tend to be committed by people who are either: insane; reacting very irrationally to circumstances for which they’re unprepared; in such circumstances that they feel (rightly or not) that they have nothing to lose; or so deep in lives of crime that threats of capital punishment just aren’t relevant (i.e., gangsters). So for those murderers, capital punishment isn’t much of a deterrent, and in many cases there’s at least some possibility of rehabilitation.
Serious acts of treason, however, tend to be perpetrated, or at least significantly aided, by people who are acting more rationally and have better lives to lose. While the leaders of such actions may not be deterred because they’re dedicated to a cause, their success may depend on larger numbers of mid-level and low-level actors, who are likely to be less committed to the cause, and thus more easily deterred by a credible threat of the death penalty if convicted. So such a threat could very likely serve to isolate the hardcore leaders from the supporters they’d need to succeed, and thus at least hinder, if not totally prevent, serious acts of treason from happening in the first place.
When a country shows the world that it’s willing to put traitors to death, it’s not just creating fear in some people, as in “oh no, it’s too dangerous to mess with them;” it’s also commanding RESPECT in many others, as in “whoa, those guys ain’t playing.” Sort of like how having a large army does both of those things.
High treason is very much akin to war, in that large numbers of lives could be at stake, and you can’t hope to prevail without at least a strong possibility of having to kill people. It’s also akin to war in the sense that one may need to kill, or threaten to kill, a few people to deter actions that would end up killing far more people.
@RB, 33:
And thus you abdicate all moral authority, stating clearly that you’re OK with killing, in cold blood and when you have full control over them, innocent people. Thanks for clearing that up.
Yeah, gotta love a bit of RESPECT, right? (gotta be capital letters) The kind of respect you can only get by killing people (some of them obviously inevitably innocent people). The international community is famous for the respect it had for the 9/11 hijackers -- those guys certainly weren’t playing, amirite? And we all respected ISIS, right? And the sheer level of RESPECT Israel is getting from the world right now is a wonder to behold. So righteous, so worthy of RESPECT.
You seem to be employing motivated reasoning in you flailing attempts to justify the barbarity of your position. War is not like treason. In fact, war is not like war as you seem to understand it.
War is like assault with a deadly weapon. The law recognises that if you shoot at me, I have a right to shoot back, and if I kill you, well, sucks to be you. However -- and this is important -- if I merely wound you, or indeed manage to disarm, disable and detain you without firing a shot, the law does NOT recognise any right for me to then take my time, calmly and dispassionately dreaming up some bogusly acceptable way to execute you. If you shoot at me (but fail to kill me) and I recognise you and follow you home and kill you in your garden, that’s murder and that’s wrong. These are not complicated concepts, and yet you continue to flail around trying to justify a state that has full control of an incarcerated individual simply offing them for… reasons.
It probably surprises you that these restrictions apply even in war. Infantry (or at least UK infantry -- fuck knows what they tell seppos) are (or at least were) very clearly told that if you’re in a firefight, you try to kill them, but if they surrender, or you take control of their wounded, you can NOT just put a bullet in them to save on rations. IN A WAR.
If you’re seriously trying to justify the cold-blooded killing of someone who you have by definition already got 100% control over, then you really ought to take a long time to think about what went wrong in your upbringing or education to make you try to defend it.
…stating clearly that you’re OK with killing, in cold blood and when you have full control over them, innocent people. Thanks for clearing that up.
Where did I mention killing innocent people? That’s not what “perpetrators” (the word I used) means. As that Super-Bowl-rigging pop star said, you need to calm down.
You seem to be employing motivated reasoning…
Yes, I am. My reasoning is motivated (as in informed) by the historical experience of the US Civil War, and the consequences of those slave-owning secessionists’ actions; and by the recent attempts by reich-wing traitors to destroy our democracy (such as it is) and possibly start another civil war. I’d rather see the relative handful of people trying to do this put to death (and thus put out of action) than see thousands of decent people losing their rights or their lives in another coup or civil war. (And trust me, if those fascists are successful, it won’t just be Americans getting killed or losing their rights.)
Perhaps you haven’t been paying attention, or perhaps your life is very busy, but in saying “you’re OK with killing … innocent people”, sonof was talking about the possibility of killing someone wrongfully convicted. Which we know is always a possibility.
Raging Bee @33
Do you think the men who kill their partners are insane?
Did you completely miss what happened in Washington on the 6th of January 2021? Because it amply demonstrated that low-level actors will gleefully commit treasonous acts in the name of their cause. Come to that while I understand that Trump may have attempted to join them (there seems to be some question about that) neither he nor any of the other planners of that day took any further action to ensure the success of the attempt on the day. Sure he didn’t call any help for far too long, but that is inaction, not action.
I think sonofrojblake has covered this well.
Because [1/6] amply demonstrated that low-level actors will gleefully commit treasonous acts in the name of their cause.
Yes, they were — possibly because, among other things, they saw very little possibility of serious punishment. And it’s still looking like very few of them will get more than a few years in jail, if any at all.
@Raging Bee, 35: you’re in favour of executing people. That automatically puts you in one of two categories:
1. people who do acknowledge that inevitably innocent people are going to get executed in any conceivable system where that’s an option, but who are totally fine with it because the innocent people getting executed are other people (and disproportionately brown people) -- the politest word I can think of those people is “barbarians”, but I suspect if you were standing in front of me I’d use something with fewer syllables that starts with a c.
2. people who don’t acknowledge the absolute cast-iron certainty that innocents will be executed because “that’s not what perpetrator means”, or some other childish bullshit, because they believe the justice system is fair and perfect and never makes mistakes -- or more likely have either never thought it through properly or lack the intellectual resources to do so, even when led by the hand through the arguments repeatedly. The politest word I can think of for these people is “morons”.
In trying to place you in one of these two categories I had always tended towards “barbarian”, but “moron” is making a strong showing in your most recent responses.
Which are you?
Also, you appear to have either not read, not understood, or forgotten Jazzlet’s question -- do you think men who kill their wives/girlfriends are insane?
(I acknowledge that you may have been perfectly well able to read, understand and remember that question, but are avoiding answering it on purpose because you know no good for you can come of engaging with it. It’s possible… I don’t credit you with the wit to think that far ahead, but we’ll see whether you answer it and then we’ll know.)
Deafening silence…