145
‘Astonishingly cruel’: Alabama seeks to test execution method on death row ‘guinea pig’
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
145 points (90.5% liked)
politics
19144 readers
5938 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Cruel? Nitrogen asphyxiation is probably one of the most painless, gentle ways to go.
Your trigger that you can’t breathe is a buildup of carbon dioxide. But as you can still exhale, you feel no panic. You just slowly drift unconscious and die. I’d take it over most causes of death.
Execution is cruel, regardless of method.
I'm against the death penalty but if I ever murder a load of people then I'd like to be able able to freely choose death by nitrogen over a life in prison
You know what else is cruel? People killing other people. And the former continuing to live despite their cruelty.
The only rub against execution to me is the risk of executing the innocent. But that is not the concern here. There is no dispute this guy is guilty.
Capital punishment is government sanctioned killing. Outside of war, the government should not have the power to kill anyone.
Let them rot in prison. It's cheaper anyway.
Abolish capital punishment.
Right, so why is that not a total disqualifier then? Even if the risk is fleeting small, there is no taking it back. If it came out later on, dead is dead. Combining that with the fact that executions are obv a psychological cluster fuck for everyone who deals with it, especially the one executed, and the fact that it takes a lot of resources every trial because it's such an unusually cruel punishment, the arguments for it are dwindling.
Also
Right but we're not voting someone in office who can eliminate all homicides in the United States. Things are different for execution.
We could also talk about how this "well tough shit" opinion always fucks over positive and healthy change, but that's probably the least impactful argument for the folks who still bank on executions as some sort of greater good.
Then why aren't you advocating for executing those that execute killers? After all, they kill people. But I'm going to assume that you think those killers are okay.
Doesn't 'people killing other people' include the state killing people? I don't see how vengeance for a murder solves anything.
Opinion 👆.
Fact: it's necessary to remove certain people who are prone to violence and incapable of rehabilitation. If you have such a problem with execution, then volunteer your time, money, and home to accommodate a violent psychopath with you forever.
Fact: when we sentence people to death we get it wrong one time in three
Fact: executing someone is more expensive than keeping them in prison for life
Ah, but it doesn't have to be. There's lots of inexpensive, humane ways to dispatch a human. How methods like electrocution and lethal cocktail injection were decided on is difficult to understand. Nitrogen, though, is probably the nicest way it could be done. Relatively cheap too, and with zero chance of failure.
The expense is in achieving that blistering 70% correctness rate, not in the way the condemned are killed.
It's not the method that's expensive, it's the appeals process, supposedly to stop innocent people from being executed. And even with all of the appeals, innocent people have still been executed.
Opinion 👆.
Fact: punishments can be reversed, if the punished stays alive. Any percentage of unjust executions is irredeemable. Also, there is a lot of evidence that abolishing the death penalty either does not affect the crime rate, or it has a positive effect (see link below).
More opinion: executions have no place in a society that highly values human rights because killing people is the exact opposite of humane. If you think prisoners are monsters and you could never end up in there, watch a documentary about it. If you see what some ppl went through, you know how easy anyone can end up there.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/ACT50/015/2008/en/
That's as silly a comment as "if you think Native Americans were wronged, give your house to one," something else I've heard people say. Societal wrongs are not solved by individuals.
Somehow all the countries that don't allow capital punishment find ways to deal with extremely violent people and don't have murderers running amok.
Russia be like...
Shitty take. There are more than two options here, and suggesting otherwise is using an either-or fallacy as a bad way to try to win an argument.
Also opinion 👆
Exactly, the headline is just trying to get people to react.
There's a BBC documentary about it, I think this one:
It's been a long time since I watched it, but I think the inert gas route is very pleasant. He even gets slightly high/happy from it.
Key takeaways:
edit: found it:
https://www.documentarytube.com/videos/how-to-kill-a-human-being-2/
Rendered unconcious within 15 seconds, dead within a minute.
In testing pigs would happily stick their heads in a space with pure nitrogen and munch on apples till they lost consciousness, fell over, then stick their heads back in the space with nitrogen to eat some more apples.
What kind of apples asking for a friend
Well yeah if we wanted it to be happy and comfortable we’ve had morphine for over a century
Medical companies will not sell if they suspect it will be used to kill human beings. If they do, they might get banned in Europe
https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/features/lethal-injection-pharma-kill-death-penalty/
Yeah, compared to injecting horrifically painful substances, I don't see why this is controversial.
I'd take a firing squad or an enormous hydraulic press tbh. If I were to be an innocent stuck with a death penalty I'd be happy to know somebody will have to clean up a messy pile of guts after my quick death.
The whole point of using gas or chemicals for the death isnt to make the punishment humane - the death penalty is not humane in any way - its to make it easier on the people doing the killing. No mess, no fuss.