Move follows Alabama’s recent killing of death row inmate Kenneth Smith using previously untested method
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.
Nitrogen hypoxia sounds like one of the best ways to die, without pain or panic, but I completely understand why no company wants to be the supplier of the means of executing people. Small volume, small profits, extreme controversy. What’s to want there?
Sure. If it was done correctly and we could trust the justice system to not kill innocent people. However they figured out the cruelest way to do it and SCOTUS ruled we have to kill innocent people even if all the evidence says they’re innocent because it might hurt the court’s reputation of they back down.
I’m not familiar with this. Is this something that actually happened?
yes more then once. Most recently the supreme court ruled you can’t bring new evidence to an areal. Why? because it would undermine the state right to be sure of their decision. Also note that the most successful way to win an appeal on a criminal case was to bring new evidence that showed your defense did not do their job or the prosecution withheld evidence that showed your innocence.
I believe they’re referencing this:
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NPR Source
This is so from 2022.
I hate the Supreme Court so much.
It’s called “finality”.
The idea that it’s more Important that the process is followed and then stops at some point than that justice is achieved.
Same reason they barred introduction of new evidence when appealing from state court to federal, giving potentially corrupt state courts full power to block exculpatory evidence to deny someone justice because the federal courts must uphold the verdict if the evidence which was accepted indicates guilt under the state law. Same thing if the prosecutor knows of evidence of innocence and withholds or, or if the evidence only turns up after the trial. You get only one chance and then you’re screwed.
Shinn V Ramirez, 2022.
They were arguing ineffective counsel post conviction because evidence wasn’t submitted that could have shown Ramirez was innocent. Lower courts agreed, citing previous SCOTUS rulings. SCOTUS decided federal courts must be bound by the original evidence only.
Money Quote -
(Separated for clarity)
Personally I love how they say we need to respect a state’s right to enforce social norms. With the death penalty. Because those are equivalent things. Betty doesn’t like to mow her lawn. She likes to let her neighbor Lucy do it. Off to the chair for her! Okay jokes aside what they mean is their power to make laws, enforce laws, and have a court system.
And then it’s too expensive? Really? I’m not going to be surprised when we end up with the purge only instead of being everywhere it’s actually when the air raid siren goes off during yard time at the prison.
https://www.npr.org/2024/01/25/1226936713/alabama-execution-kenneth-smith
Because they did in the worst way possible. All Alabama had to do was flood a sealed room with nitrogen and the execution would have been fairly “unremarkable”. Instead they forced a has mask on Smith that required his cooperation to function properly, didn’t have a one-way valve to remove exhaled gas, causing CO2 to build up in the tiny mask.
A haircut is also a painless and quick procedure, but that doesn’t mean your barber can’t be incompetent and totally fuck up your scalp.
Especially if the American Barber Association has a rule that none of its members may participate in the haircut; and scissor manufacturers all refuse to sell to you. So you end up having it done by a random person who doesn’t mind ignoring what every barber says, using a pair of rusty scissors the sherrif was able to find at a garage sale.
Maybe at that point you shouldn’t cut the damn hair
That’s the thing and something I bring up with other engineers all the time. The medical community decided to not help and the result is the government can’t do it very well making it harder and harder to justify the practice. Engineers however continue to work on military tech.
We need to organize and blacklist those that help make weapons.
Why do people be such a hard on for asphyxiation executions. This is the same shit the said about the first gas chamber. What about the added adrenaline from the body and mind knowing the are in a death situation? What is the person beings to hyperventilate? Even the persons level of muscle mass can effect how fast it takes or when the body switches over to known O2 sources of energy to contract muscles in an attempt to keep the heart pumping. Probably the Cedar like conversions we saw from the first person they tried this on. This will inevitably be found to be an on sound way execute people and outlaw, the only question is how many people will be tortured to death before people wake up!
I take it you failed aviation physiology class?
I didn’t. Then I earned a flight instructor certificate and taught it for a few years. And I’ve flown unpressurized airplanes to their service ceilings. Lemme tell ya: Hypoxia is some serious shit.
The brain needs oxygen to live. No oxygen, brain die. I wonder how much adrenaline was in the systems of all them cave divers who ran out of air over the years.
Done correctly, the condemned won’t live long enough for hyperventilation to be a factor. But go ahead and try; it’ll only kill you faster.
Harken back to 9th grade health class and recall that mammalian lungs function by diffusion. Oxygen enters your blood only because chemicals want to pass from areas of relatively high concentration to relatively low concentration. Blood that has entered the lungs from the body doesn’t have much oxygen in it; some but less than fresh air. So oxygen flows in, and CO2 flows out. The reason putting your head in a bag sucks so much is because CO2 quickly builds up in the bag, and then it stops flowing out of your blood. Your body has the ability to feel too much CO2, and that sensation sucks a lot. If you’re in a big room full of nothing but nitrogen, your body can get rid of the CO2, and it will actually get rid of oxygen too. The blood in your veins, returning from your body to your lungs, that doesn’t have much oxygen in it, does have some. And if the air in your lungs has absolutely no oxygen in it, that “some” oxygen in your blood will diffuse out.
In normal air, hyperventilation sucks because you actually remove too much CO2 and that messes with your body’s natural ability to regulate your breathing. But, it doesn’t take many lungfuls of zero oxygen air before you lose consciousness.
That feeling of panic you get when holding your breath, or breathing with your head in a bag, where you’re breathing in your own old breath, and it hurts and sucks? That feeling happens because there’s too much CO2. In a low oxygen environment with plenty of air for you to exhale in, that doesn’t happen. You just get a little dizzy, you get a little lightheaded, you fall over and just fucking die before you realize what the problem is. Happens to sailors sometimes; there are compartments of big steel ships that are usually sealed, the walls use up all the oxygen in there by rusting, then a sailor has to go in there to maintain something. They open a door, climb in, take a few steps, and fall over and just fucking die.
That’s how you would describe it if you were his buddy at the door watching him. “He was fine, then he fell over and just fucking died.” Because the air around your face outside the door is safe to breathe, the air 6 feet away on the other side of the door killed your friend in less than a minute and it’ll kill you too if you try to climb in and help him.
And the scariest thing is it doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t smell, it doesn’t taste, it doesn’t feel. It breathes like normal air because normal air is mostly nitrogen. We breathe it all the time; most of the gas in your lungs right now is nitrogen.
And Commander Adama might set his light saber to warp drive. Have you considered that?
List of the human body’s “known 02 sources:”
That’s it. Your body doesn’t have any spare oxygen saved up in your bones or whatever. No oxygen go in mouth and nose, no oxygen go in blood, no oxygen go in brain, brain die.
The heart can pump all it wants, if the heart pumps blood with no oxygen to the brain, the brain dies. That’s the fundamental principle we’re working with here.
I had to go through fairly extensive training so that I didn’t kill myself and several other people this way by accident, yet Alabama couldn’t manage it properly on purpose.
Because nitrogen hypoxia is a completely humane method of execution, if done right. You just go to sleep and never wake up.
here’s Destin from smartereveryday experiencing hypoxia. he’s told to his face that he is going to die if he doesn’t put his mask back on and get some oxygen, yet the whole time he has a giant grin on his face
I’m staunchly opposed to the death penalty, but if you’re going to kill someone nitrogen induced hypoxia is one of the most humane ways to do so.
Is there some reasoning behind that? As far as I know, there are at least some gas chambers in the US. And even if Alabama happens not to have one, it doesn’t seem too complicated to build one.
Cruelty and human suffering is the foundation upon which Alabama was built. The barbarity of it is the point.
Give me a Cessna Caravan and I’ll kill anyone you want with hypoxia 18 at a time. It’s not that hard. Alabama fucked it up because school is illegal there.
I think I read some people had to be in the room or they were requiring it anyway, not that they had to.
Why!!? Why would anyone want to be in that room!?
Yeah you need to be in a chamber where your exhaled co2 is so immediately diluted that you get no feedback from it. I believe the current attempts used normal medical masks
It sounds like a reasonable way to die when the individual doesn’t know what’s going on or is accepting/willing. As an execution method it’s shit.
Well, disregarding the normal fear of death that would be there regardless of the method, I think the issue is the mask. It would be much better to just fill the room with N2. You can do this easilly enough by evaporating liquid N2. Of course, this would not be “medical grade” so people would complain just to complain.
We could also just not kill people. Kinda seems to be at the root of this problem.
I could not agree more. People should stop murdering people so there is no need for the death penalty.
Keep in mind this guy thought it was fine to kill someone for $1000. Not any hatred or psychological issue or ideology. Just a bit of cash.
Or we could just not retaliate with execution. We could follow the evidence that execution doesn’t reduce crime rate or severity and to not make murderers of the state
Its this flawed argument on repeat. You just start assuming that killing a murderer (“life for a life”) is somehow automatically wrong and then use it to show death penalty is wrong.
Why is “life for a life” somehow unfair demand for the premeditated murderers? What is this based on? Or just repeating it because you heard it so often.
Youre Right I’m just parroting the idea that killing is bad. Definitely not from a belief that punitive justice is ineffective at reducing crime, that we as a society must be better than our worst people, and a deep terror informed by history at the idea of a government having the power to decide to kill its own citizens.
Like seriously this is fucking gas chambers in Alabama and some people aren’t just horrified by where that might go?
You mix two very different issues. Whether our corrupt governments should have the power to execute people, which they shouldn’t but its not what this article is about. Also, since they had this power since like the beginning of written history, I kind of am too used to it to be horrified.
And if we are executing people, what the method should be. Electric chair is something that actually horrifies me. So if we at least get a 100x more humane method, it is a win in my book. Certainly not gonna loose sleep because it has association with Nazis. So does VolksWagen and Fanta.
“Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?”
-Holly Near
If you murder a murderer, that makes you a murderer. Just because the state is the one doing it doesn’t make it okay.
Same (faulty) logic used to tell the oppressed not rise up against their oppressors. If you’re going to conflate all killing with murder, be prepared to get into weeds like self defense and right to die. If you’re willing to admit killing humans is more nuanced than that, then and only then we can have a real discussion.
Sure. I can say that self defense (only in cases where there is an immediate threat of death) is fine due to it being a life or death situation. I can also agree to right to die being okay since there is consent, so long as the person is considered to be in a mentally healthy state.
Not sure about the rising up thing, though, but that is very nuanced. I believe in democracy, but most of the time, corruption makes it so that true democracy becomes impossible. Overthrowing a government is also a difficult topic, since often times, it is a movement that gets coopted by the powerful or by those who seek power instead of those who seek the government to serve all of its people.
There is a difference between reacting to a situation vs creating a new situation.
Very few people would argue against having to use violence to stop someone else from using it, in the moment where other options don’t present themselves. However a murdered container in prison is no longer a threat. The state has the luxury of just keeping them there until time and nature does her thing.
Basically the rules for a crisis are not the rules for a non-crisis. Additionally, if it is required to use violence to stop violence at least the hope is something bad won’t happen. Not the case for someone in jail. The bad thing already happened.
More broadly Ukraine has the right to defend herself. She does not have the right to burn down parts of Russia 40 years from now when the war is long over.
If you bake bread, you are a bread baker. If you play football, you are a football player. If you murder someone, you are a murderer.
If you don’t commit the crime of murder, you are not a murderer. Murder is a legal term. Administering a death penalty is not murder, since it is not a crime.
No matter how much batman says otherwise, there is nothing inherently not ok about death penalty for murderers. Of course, you can dislike it all you want. But don’t go slandering people that disagree with you.
Arguably, the opposite is true: If I decide I really want to kill you, what should be the minimal punishment? Is it ok to just pay a fine? Is it ok to be in prison for a month? How about a year? What if I decide the slap on the wrist punishment is worth it? Why should the punishment be less than paying with my own life in kind? Why is your life worth less than mine when I am the murderer in this hypothetical?
The same way that the Holocaust was legal…
An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.
Life in prison.
Murder is not exclusively a legal term; it is also used in ethical/moral discussions, like how I used it. A government can decide legallity, but it cannot decide if something is moral or not, although most governments attempt to do so. What is moral or not is also not universal, and can vary across different cultures and time periods.
You mean like what you just did with this comment?
Keep in mind, in the US, there is a ~4% false conviction rate for the death penalty. That means that ~4% of people who get the death penalty are innocent.
Source: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1306417111
I do remember about the 4%. That is why I don’t support death penalty.
I am just honest about the reason why I don’t support it, instead of pretending I am somehow morally superior for refusing to kill.
As for life in prison, that is up to everyone’s values, whether that is equivalent. In my view, it is not.
Why do you even care which way they kill people then? Trying to take the moral high ground, when you’re just as blood thirsty as the condemned.
That’s a ridiculous argument. If I believe a bank robber should be stopped from robbing a bank using force, can’t I also demand the force is not excessive?
Thinking death is an appropriate punishment and torture isn’t is not contradictory.
You think bank robbery is a crime worthy of execution?
I literally said the opposite. Just because I don’t believe people should be allowed to rob banks, I don’t believe they should be killed or maimed for it.
Just because I believe the death penalty is just does not mean I believe people should be tortured.
And we have the capacity to be better than that.
There was no compelling need to execute him. If such a compelling need did exist, it would have presented itself in the past 36 years where he was in custody but not executed. But it didn’t, so the state just waited until some arbitrary time to tick a box that didn’t need to be ticked.
My fundamental issue is with the “better than that”. I really don’t see why letting a cold blooded murderer off lightly would be the better way.
What do you mean by “off lightly?” They’re still getting punished while serving a life sentence. The punishment stops when the lights go out.
Do you actually believe that life imprisonment and death are the same level of punishment? And if yes, why would it matter which one we use?
If it is not the same, then how are they not getting of lightly for ending someone elses life?
Well prison for decades doesn’t seem very light to me. I have never been granted but from those that have I have heard most wouldn’t recommend it.
You think living the rest of your life in a cage is “getting off lightly?” Are you a child?
What need is that, exactly?
You don’t know that. You think that, and there’s evidence to support it, but you don’t know it.
As I wrote in a different thread, yes, I agree we should not have death penalty due to the high possibility (inevitability?) of executing innocent people.
I just don’t see any moral issue with executing actual murderers with N2, just the practical issue of not being able to precisely determine who the murderers are.
Still not enough. I have had the same stance for a long time. The death penalty should only be used, if ever, for crimes so bad that to not use it is to say thr crime was as bad as regular murder. Warlords who commit genocide level.
Just not true! The execution method requires a willing or unconscious victim. Why do people think any type of asphyxiation will be nice and peaceful regardless of the gas used? (yes I understand the “science” behind using this gas.) but what if the person holds their breath, or account for the added adrenaline, or the person hyperventilating. I can go on. It’s not medically sound way to execute people. Honestly, this is the same lies they pushed about previous humane execution methods. “it’s painless, the science is sound.” I promise you, after about 5 more “botched” executions using this N2 method it’ll be abandoned.
“What if the person holds their breath?”
Then it’ll take maybe a minute longer, and their last words are gonna be “BUH! Huh! Huh! Huh! …huh.”
“or account for the added adrenaline”
No oxygen in brain, brain die. I think you lied about understanding the science.
“or the person is hyperventilating”
Yeah, what if they breathe no oxygen faster?
Is there a medically sound way? What does “medically sound” even mean? Theere is no patient who is supposed to survive.
It is the best way of execution I can think of short of explosives near brain.
That’s the point you pull out and try to focus on? “Humane” executions always had a medical backing for why it world work.
Then the you try to say “is the best way of execution I can think of short of explosives near the brain.” oh really that’s the best you can think of? Shows how flawed and warped your understanding of this is. If you honestly want to make it as quick and painless in pretty sure the French figured that out back in 1789. But Ya let’s blow up people’s heads with c4.
Your brain can function without oxygen for over 30 seconds. I see no reason why it wouldn’t in a detached head.
The guillotine suffer from the same issue most execution methods used until now, they only seem “quick and painless”. Nitrogen gas actually is painless.
Nitrogen gas will be found to be unsuitable for execution. I just hope people wake up to this before more people are tortured to death.
I really would like to know: The people who object to N2, if you could pick any reasonably practical execution method (but it has to be execution, no death by old age), what would you pick?
Ah yes, the ole “let’s bring back the guillotine that left you alive and semi conscious for up to 30 seconds while your head rolls around” argument. Such humane, much wow
Yeah the mask and timing is what caused that one prisoner to be in so much suffering since he knew it was going to happen imminently so he held his breath.
If it were done gradually over a period of like 30 minutes, he likely wouldn’t have noticed and just drifted into unconsciousness.
Or put the mask on then switch it to N2 without him knowing when.
A lot more difficult to do without him noticing and the “feared” mask on his face and potential to vomit into the mask would still be an issue.
Yeah the room option is better in that regard.
It would need to have some hardware interlocks engineered though for safety reasons. After turning on the gas, you won’t be able to physically open the door until the ventilation system removes the nitrogen after the execution.
You could do that although N2 gas is not that dangerous. Just opening a door to a well ventilated room will get rid of the gas. It is not poisonous or anything. Its not like you are doing this every week that you get lax about procedure.
Reminder: Texas is still a member of the union, for better or worse.
…No, you’d notice. When you’re in that “not quite enough oxygen in the room” scenario, you get tingles and headaches and such. It kinda sucks. Though I think I’d rather die that way than those gas station lethal injections they’ve been doing.
If “right to die” laws become more of a thing, this would be the most compassionate way of doing a home suicide kit. I wonder if the manufacturers would oppose that as well, or only executions.
Like you said, there’s not much in it for them either way.
How is this more compassionate that loading someone up with an OD of morphine or something similar?
For a home kit, there’s a lot less potential for abuse. You don’t need hard drugs, or any abused drugs, it’s just nitrogen. The person doesn’t have any feeling of suffocating, they just go to sleep. Similar to why carbon monoxide poisoning is so dangerous.
Because ODing can be a rough way to die. With nitrogen hypoxia you just go to sleep and never wake up.
Oh really? Sounds like this went well:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/25/alabama-executes-kenneth-smith-nitrogen-gas
Yes, they did it wrong. You’re supposed to use a chamber, not a mask. The mask let’s CO2 build up which is how your body tells it’s suffocating.
Maybe also the moral and ethical questions that come with it, you know, besides just money?
Haha yeah, I’m sure that got an entire slide in the PowerPoint at the board meeting. I’m sure plenty of people there morally object. I also think that a steady and sizeable stream of income would instantly cure those objections though. But as the person above said already there is only a trickle of pennies in it for them.