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.

    • Akasazh@feddit.nl
      21·
      10 months ago

      The most bizarre thing about the entire debate is that most proponents of the death penalty explicitly want it to be a painful experience.

      Everything pushed to make they process more effective and humane meets resistance.

      • quicklime@lemm.ee
        5·
        10 months ago

        They’re self-convinced, against nearly all studies and evidence and expert consensus, that capital punishment is an effective deterrent.

    • SoylentBlake@lemm.eeEnglish
      12·
      10 months ago

      Dude was unconscious almost immediately. His brain was dead but the body takes longer to go. The violent spasms was the unconscious and uninhabited body using the last of its energy, mechanically.

      This has been so dramatized it’s disgusting. The execution? Humane. The media around it? Must clearly want more suffering.

        • SoylentBlake@lemm.eeEnglish
          5·
          10 months ago

          Life is not black and white. You can deal in absolutes all you want, that just leaves the rest of us here to make the hard decisions, since your abdication.

          Jailing people for life is also inhumane, solitary is torture that can lead to permanent damage. But what alternatives are left with? Society didn’t ask these people to steal, attack, rape or murder. Some people just choose it. So we have to separate them from the rest of us, for the common good.

          Fwiw, I don’t favor capital punishment unless guilt is obvious for all to see - beyond a doubt. But if we have to do it, and situationally It’s appropriate (some will say it never is), we should do it as humanely as possible. Not that they necessarily deserve that, but ultimately it’s a reflection of us.

          This is all first world problems btw. If the facade falls, we’ll all see people put down with absolute disregard. We have survivors alive today from past atrocity, we aren’t even removed in the slightest. Look up the Khmer Rouge and the killing fields, I had a coworker who escaped after watching his brother chopped apart and his mother gunned down.

          Purity in your moralism is a luxury most can’t afford, unfortunately.

          • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
            8·
            10 months ago

            Jailing people for life is also inhumane, solitary is torture that can lead to permanent damage. But what alternatives are left with?

            Rehabilitation and reeducation work camps.

            • SoylentBlake@lemm.eeEnglish
              2·
              10 months ago

              For some, sure.

              I’m all for the Scandinavian model, I just don’t think the John Wayne Gacys of the world are reformable. I think some people are just not meant to live in the group. If ostracization was still a thing, then let’s do that, as if back in the day surviving the wild wasn’t effectively a death sentence. You wanna drop these people on an uninhabited Alaskan island? Sure. I’m all for it

              • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
                4·
                10 months ago

                We should strive for a world where we can cure psychopaths. Mental health isn’t magic. Everyone can be rehabilitated if we figure out how.

                • SoylentBlake@lemm.eeEnglish
                  2·
                  10 months ago

                  I agree. But we are still left with the here and now and a situation that we didn’t ask to be in, that we (as a whole) are forced into.

                  Believe me, I think the first job of government, everyday, is to pass objective rationalization for their continued existence. I am beyond critical as a default. Criticism of authority is fundamental to any and all rights of free people. Corruption of those that make up the system should be punished at exponential rates. A police officer commiting a crime should be handled like a criminal, not an officer. Should steps be taken to mitigate and help the masses, based off medical expert advice? Absolutely, whole-heartedly.

                  I understand the arguments against capital punishment and at my core i agree, but in the end we still have this shit show we didn’t want to be in to deal with. In an analogy, I don’t think blaming the garbage collectors will make people produce less garbage. Let’s do the things to fix it, across the board, but that doesn’t mean leaving the obvious garbage out to rot and fester in the street.

                  • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
                    3·
                    10 months ago

                    I don’t think blaming the garbage collectors will make people produce less garbage.

                    Your analogy doesn’t make sense because our governments create much of the crime they arrest people for lol

    • KISSmyOS@feddit.de
      7·
      10 months ago

      Anesthesizing someone is difficult and you need the right drugs. No licensed doctor is allowed nor willing to do it, and no company making the drugs agrees to its use for killing people.