United Nations moves to stop Alabama from carrying out America’s first nitrogen gas execution
“U.N. experts argue there has been no evidence to suggest that nitrogen gas would not “result in a painful and humiliating death.””
Oh FFS. Nitrogen asphyxiation has been dangerous in industry specifically *because* it’s painless. If you find yourself in a volume filled with carbon dioxide – a small room, a tank of some kind, whatever – you are *instantly* going to know it. Your lungs will object, you’ll cough, you’ll hold your breath… and you’ll try to get the hell out of there. If you find yourself in a volume filled with *poison* gas, you’ll try to evacuate even faster. But nitrogen? You feel nothing. Your lungs are used to nitrogen… about 80% of every breath you take is nitrogen. You’ll continue to breathe it in, and continue to expel oxygen with each breath, rapidly getting rid of the oxygen in your blood as you continue to respire normally, until you rather quickly slip into a peaceful unconsciousness, and soon *die.*
All evidence points to nitrogen being a peaceful and painless way to go. And consequently one of the less humiliating, unless you find not thrashing about and screaming in pain and terror humiliating. I imagine the actual goal is to simply stop executions, rather than having any legitimate objection to nitrogen. Because if this is carried out and shown to be what history has shown it should be – effective and painless – other governments might adopt it. Given that unlike lethal injection it quires little skill – just strapping on a mask, rather than finding veins and jamming needles into them – and uses cheap and easily available nitrogen gas rather than difficult to obtain chemicals, nitrogen executions should be relatively inexpensive. One argument might be that this will incentivize bad governments to execute more; but bad governments have little trouble with just shooting people they don’t like. The counterpoint is that taxpayers shouldn’t be overly burdened if clearly easier alternatives are available.
3 responses to “Another reason to sneer at the UN”
I have yet to obtain the apparatus, not at this time thanks….. BUT, living after the EMP detonation in the cannibalistic “society” that would remain has directed me to look around for ways to check out. I’ve personally settled on this method as the exit plan. Just saying……
My impression is that this is over engineering. Execution is simply another punishment. It may be justly or unjustly imposed. The only point the folks opposed to it actually make is its permanence. After all you can let someone out of jail but resurrection is presently beyond our means.
This is of course countered by the very reasons we execute people, retribution, deterrence and prevention. Killing someone is as harsh as you can get without actual torture, if death wont deter someone then they can’t be deterred without worse measure and dead people have a remarkably low recidivism rate.
My preference would be to not make this whole issue so complicated. You don’t need gas or drugs to end a life a gun, garden shovel or push off the roof will do. These are relativity clean if one doesn’t miss and can be repeated as needed if one dose. Not its not painless but its fairly quick and I would argue more appropriate.
The procedure went well. More will follow..