View Full Version : Nitrogen for execution
Today will be a turning point I feel for all (U.S.) future executions.
Alabama will execute the first (U.S.) inmate today/tonight with nitrogen. The critics (who are against ALL executions) claim it is unproven. Yeah, the system used today can be blotched due to human error but nitrogen does kill people.
Working in industrial sites I have vast experience with N2. Since it is an inert gas it is used to clean up equipment and vessels for maintenance work and welding. It is hard piped as a handy supply just like tool air for air tools. Many workers in confined spaces mistakenly attach their air tools to N2 instead of O2. The tools exhaust the N2 and soon the air they breath is composed of too much of it. They pass out and suffocate not knowing any different. Rescue people often die under the same circumstances not knowing of the N2 content.
It is THAT undetectable, odorless, colorless, and already the most abundant element we breath @ 78%. Air under normal conditions is slightly less than 21% oxygen,
Unless there is some kind of human screwup or some lone judge ruling against it I feel after today we can say goodbye to "Ol Sparky" and injections. I think most elec chairs are already museum artifacts.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/alabama-inmate-waiting-hear-court-171433122.html
Sounds like it will work very well. Of course, CO2 is, IIRC, colorless, odorless, tasteless, etc. and of course universally toxic for mammals including human beings. Got to wonder just exactly why it is not used to kill convicts sentenced to execution. Simply put them to sleep, switch over to CO2 and let them go. Still think gas chamber, electric chair, hanging, etc. are not problematic. JMHO. Sincerely. bruce.
Sounds like it will work very well. Of course, CO2 is, IIRC, colorless, odorless, tasteless, etc. and of course universally toxic for mammals including human beings. Got to wonder just exactly why it is not used to kill convicts sentenced to execution. Simply put them to sleep, switch over to CO2 and let them go. Still think gas chamber, electric chair, hanging, etc. are not problematic. JMHO. Sincerely. bruce.
I donno. Perhaps it is because CO2 isn't available already bottled up like N2 that I know of. Still, an inmate could be put in an airtight small room or fixture and he would just breath himself to death.
A lot of work and expense goes into the comforts of the guilty, though the guilty had no concerns over the innocent victims.
JohnMOhio
01-25-2024, 12:00
I agree with you Allen, a lot of expense to comfort the guilty. On the other hand, when "we" sentence someone to death, considering what the victims may have gone through, are we in society seeking justice or revenge? If seeking justice we may try to be civilized. When seeking revenge the sentence of death could/should be the same method used by the guilty party. Now we have another problem. What if the convicted person is actually innocent? What if the person on trial gets a not guilty verdict and is really innocent. Where does that person get justice? A self defense shooting as an example. Just some thoughts for now.
I agree with you Allen, a lot of expense to comfort the guilty. On the other hand, when "we" sentence someone to death, considering what the victims may have gone through, are we in society seeking justice or revenge? If seeking justice we may try to be civilized. When seeking revenge the sentence of death could/should be the same method used by the guilty party. Now we have another problem. What if the convicted person is actually innocent? What if the person on trial gets a not guilty verdict and is really innocent. Where does that person get justice? A self defense shooting as an example. Just some thoughts for now.
Oh I agree. Is it justice or revenge?
Victims never truly get justice and revenge doesn't actually help anyone. I feel prisons should at least be as uncomfortable as I had it in grade school though. NO A/C, little heat, NO ventilation, NO window screens, NO contact with the outside world at all.
If paroles ended and time off for good behavior were ended along with school life conditions mentioned above, many people would not commit crimes or want to get caught a 2nd time. Instead the jails are overflowing with many just getting a slap on the wrist. It is a game for so many to see how much they can get away with and if arrested then no big deal, they'll get a little rest and be released to go at it again.
Phloating Phlasher
01-25-2024, 07:27
Its called suffocation.
Just saying.
It's over.
What I know about N2 is that if I had to be executed and had a choice. This is the way I would prefer.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/alabama-set-execute-inmate-nitrogen-053007615.html
The problem is that the death penalty, electrically, hanging, shooting, or any thing else should be quick. 30 years after the crime the guilty party being is in no way or fashion is the same person that did the crime.
Think back, have you changed any in the past 25-30 years? If you are convicted of a crime, your punishment should be quick. Take the SOB and throw him out of a 30 story building within 3-5 years of the crime.
Leaving him waiting decades for punishment is torture. The victim was not tortured for decades.
plenty of bottled CO2, isnt that still used to carbonate beverages?
a nitro pushed Guiness is a fine thing,
plenty of bottled CO2, isnt that still used to carbonate beverages?
a nitro pushed Guiness is a fine thing,
Safe O2 levels fall between 19.5% to 23.5%. Anything that pushes the oxygen beyond those levels can or will kill you. It depends upon how far and how long. Maybe using CO2 has some side effects like nausea or something? I donno why it isn't considered.
blackhawknj
01-26-2024, 08:25
Fentanyl would work better IMHO.
Fentanyl would work better IMHO.
"Bang"
JohnMOhio
01-26-2024, 11:17
Red, I agree that a person can change after 25 to 30 years of imprisonment. However it is a controlled environment and the imprisoned person either follows the rules or not. Swift punishment of 3 to 5 years sounds right but was not a person recently released from prison after 18 years of being found to be wrongly convicted and it was not on a technicality.
As for waiting years for punishment being torture, is that not a part of our law regarding submission of new evidence that the person my not be guilty. As for it being torture to the truly guilty, they made the decision to commit the crime. If they want to end this "torture" stop the appeals and get it over with.
The process of the law may not be swift but it is supposed to be cautionary. Innocent until PROVEN GUILTY beyond a reasonable doubt. Or do we go to the law of the west, give them a fair trial and then hang them.
Consider this. A jury of our peers. Say a CCW person is charged and in his mind he was justified. He had to make a split second decision and according to the prosecutor it was the wrong one. Should the jury be made up of 12 CCW holders?
That would be a true jury of peers.
Red, I agree that a person can change after 25 to 30 years of imprisonment. However it is a controlled environment and the imprisoned person either follows the rules or not. Swift punishment of 3 to 5 years sounds right but was not a person recently released from prison after 18 years of being found to be wrongly convicted and it was not on a technicality.
As for waiting years for punishment being torture, is that not a part of our law regarding submission of new evidence that the person my not be guilty. As for it being torture to the truly guilty, they made the decision to commit the crime. If they want to end this "torture" stop the appeals and get it over with.
The process of the law may not be swift but it is supposed to be cautionary. Innocent until PROVEN GUILTY beyond a reasonable doubt. Or do we go to the law of the west, give them a fair trial and then hang them.
Consider this. A jury of our peers. Say a CCW person is charged and in his mind he was justified. He had to make a split second decision and according to the prosecutor it was the wrong one. Should the jury be made up of 12 CCW holders?
That would be a true jury of peers.
I'll start out with John's post above. We have a system of justice broadly based on the idea that if a few guilty people have to go free to assure that no innocent people are punished that's fine with me. There have been people who have been exonerated after years on death row, mostly based on DNA evidence. My grandfather was once a juror in a capital murder case in southeast Texas in the early 1930s. The prosecution had a strong (for the time) circumstantial case aided by the fact that the accused didn't have an alibi but did have a motive. He was sentenced to life in prison. Many years later the real killer, who in this case was in fact the real killer, made a death bed confession in a prison in Mississippi. After a long stretch in prison the convicted "killer" was released. My old grandpappy then said he'd never ever again vote for conviction in a case made solely on circumstantial evidence.
Now to the issue at hand. Suffocation is suffocation. Carbon Dioxide was mentioned as a possible agent of execution. Long ago I was working in a surveillance van with another agent in the dog days of summer. The van had a Co2 dry ice air conditioner. After about an hour in the van, this particular night, I started to feel a bit short of breath, then a lot short of breath, the other guy noticed the same and we got the h*ll out. The air conditioner had developed a leak and the carbon dioxide was displacing the air in the van. Our bodies were just starting to tell us that we were about to be in real trouble. I read an account of the nitrous oxide execution, it took the old boy several minutes to lose conciousness and there was a lot of struggling up to that point. I think it was about 20 minutes before he was pronounced dead.
Another point, apparently this was the fourth attempt to kill this old boy. There comes a point where incompetence by the prison execution staff becomes cruel and unusual punishment. As far as I'm concerned after, lets say two attempts to off a murderer the sentence should be commuted to life without parole.
Lastly, the attempt to sanitize this stuff is wrong headed and counter productive. The fact that we use trappings of medicine to accomplish capital punishment doesn't change what it is. A bullet to the back of the head is quicker and less painful than just about any of the so called humane methods we've come up with. Back when the gas chamber was the way to go a warden in California was so horrified by the obvious suffering of the convict that he resigned and became an anti death penalty advocate. Shooting, the guillotine, and hanging (if done right) are all probably more humane than the current methods we use to make ourselves (as a country) feel better about it,. I remember an account of an execution in the old Soviet Union of a serial killer. The old boy was taken from his cell into a room with a drain in the floor. He was told not to turn around. He probably didn't even hear the bang from the pistol shot to the back of his head.
Phloating Phlasher
01-26-2024, 02:22
Why over complicate it?
To make it more humane?
Really:
The execution took about 22 minutes from the time between the opening and closing of the curtains to the viewing room. Smith appeared to remain conscious for several minutes. For at least two minutes, he appeared to shake and writhe on the gurney, sometimes pulling against the restraints. That was followed by several minutes of heavy breathing, until breathing was no longer perceptible."
Any good general anesthetic & then insulin OD.
From what I've heard, those who died at industrial sites using N2 instead of tool air simply worked till they got dizzy then keeled over to sleep. Of course they then suffocated but didn't know anything of it. Inside of those confined space vessels it no doubt took a while to displace the O2. That being the case then perhaps if administered slowly it would take longer but be more gentle or humane.
BTW OSHA now requires open vents where possible (confined space work) and/or forced fresh air. I have been in some vessels where a vacuum was used I suppose to keep from stirring up dust and rust. Same principal, it pulled air in from the outside through open vents. Hose was about 6"-8" and had a strong force, One night one of the contractors working inside needed to pee. Instead of making the 100' climb to get out at the top he decided to pee into the large vacuum hose. It grabbed him and people outside could hear him screaming. The machine was shut down with no lasting injury to the worker. He didn't do that again.
Phloating Phlasher
01-27-2024, 03:14
The problem with Co2 is that its what our biology uses to determine if we need to breathe or not. Not Oxygen, oddly enough.
Using Co2 would trigger a "need to breathe" reflex N2 won't, because there's no trigger associated with it, you just quit metabolizing oxygen & your mind & body shut down once you've metabolized whats already in the blood & tissues..
This is why divers suffer from "Shallow water blackout", they out of O2 but haven't exhaled & so no breathing trigger & the just fade away.
Tom Trevor
01-27-2024, 06:09
Russian method sound painless until the end. Toss them out a sixth story window into a parking lot. whoosh splat!
Russian method sound painless until the end. Toss them out a sixth story window into a parking lot. whoosh splat!
AHHH! The Putin favored method!
What’s the problem with a bullet behind the ear?
What’s the problem with a bullet behind the ear?
That's using common sense so it gets ruled out immediately.
Make it complex. Make it drawn out for sympathy support. Make it near impossible to even be put on death row. Meanwhile our prisons fill up reflecting a failed judicial system. There's big money in arresting the same people over and over for the same crimes. Murder has become trivial to judges. While a person can change over time, become a better person, it doesn't replace the loss of someone they killed, robed, raped, stabbed, etc.. If you break a window it doesn't replace itself. What's done is done.
Johnny P
01-28-2024, 09:50
Apparently the guy didn't just go to sleep, so you can look for the bleeding heart do-gooders to jump on this too.
"Hamm said nitrogen flowed for around 15 minutes. The gas was administered through a mask, while two execution workers, in addition to Smith's spiritual adviser, Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood, looked on. Media witnesses said Smith appeared conscious for about ten minutes. He shook and writhed for about two minutes on the gurney, followed by about five minutes of heavy breathing."
Apparently the guy didn't just go to sleep, so you can look for the bleeding heart do-gooders to jump on this too.
"Hamm said nitrogen flowed for around 15 minutes. The gas was administered through a mask, while two execution workers, in addition to Smith's spiritual adviser, Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood, looked on. Media witnesses said Smith appeared conscious for about ten minutes. He shook and writhed for about two minutes on the gurney, followed by about five minutes of heavy breathing."
If applied too much too quickly it might be like smothering someone with a pillow and a reaction would occur. It sounds to me like they started at a good starting point assuming they are taking notes and will adjust accordingly in the future. I would suspect they tested it on animals first but again, I donno.
I believe I read at the end of the article after all the badmouthing that "some" of his reactions may have been involuntary. If so then probably no conscious suffering at that point.
Safe O2 levels fall between 19.5% to 23.5%. Anything that pushes the oxygen beyond those levels can or will kill you. It depends upon how far and how long. Maybe using CO2 has some side effects like nausea or something? I donno why it isn't considered.
greta would frown since it is a greenhouse gas,,,
Phloating Phlasher
01-31-2024, 04:50
Whatever method is used it should be humane. (quick & relatively painless for those contesting the meaning) At least as humane as putting loved animal to sleep."The Final Mercy". We are, after all supposed to be "The Good Guys".
It can be done, I've seen it done more than once.
The last time just a month ago.
2 shots, one a general anesthetic to relax the poor thing, then after a minute or so to take effect the actual lethal chemical. It was all over in probably 2 minutes. In both cases the animal simply relaxed & "fell asleep" in the first 10 seconds, Neither animal seemed distressed in the least at any point.
We're not concerned with the prisoner here if we're honest, but with the touchy-freely susceptibilities of those in authority.
Interesting point Red. But, shouldn't they have to "suffer" some with those memories? I'm more of a "getter done" voter. Yes, there is the occasional miss. Some poor guy who only committed thirty low key crimes gets sent to the chair. Well, that's the problem with being dumb, uneducated, mean, ugly, ect. There is always going to be a percentage of mistakes. Give them a metal. Write something nice on their grave stone, but it's OK in the end. Fifty thousand Americans died in VN for basically nothing. They weren't even criminals but gave their lives. If 1% of executions were mistakes and 90% of those individuals were repeat offenders, I'd say those are OK numbers.
Interesting point Red. But, shouldn't they have to "suffer" some with those memories? I'm more of a "getter done" voter. Yes, there is the occasional miss. Some poor guy who only committed thirty low key crimes gets sent to the chair. Well, that's the problem with being dumb, uneducated, mean, ugly, ect. There is always going to be a percentage of mistakes. Give them a metal. Write something nice on their grave stone, but it's OK in the end. Fifty thousand Americans died in VN for basically nothing. They weren't even criminals but gave their lives. If 1% of executions were mistakes and 90% of those individuals were repeat offenders, I'd say those are OK numbers.
Sounds reasonable enough to me.....
54351
This would work to end 30 years of behind bars torture.
https://www.foxnews.com/world/man-dies-cooking-eating-highly-poisonous-pufferfish
Ah, jail food. I got served something that looked like monkey guts. That aside: Art and John make some good sense with the debate. So, someone in prison for thirty yrs. "changes some", so what? Do we have time for that?
Phloating Phlasher
02-04-2024, 02:03
This would work to end 30 years of behind bars torture.
https://www.foxnews.com/world/man-dies-cooking-eating-highly-poisonous-pufferfish
That wasn't puffer-fish (Fugu) way too slow acting.
The most common method of identifying Tetrodotoxin poisoning is to look inside the decadent's throat. Its so fast acting & toxic there's a good chance there will still be scales of puffer flesh present because they didn't all reach the stomach before death.
I wonder if puffer fish are harmful to pets.
Dying on a lab table strapped down with leather (that might get banned) is a cold and lonely way to die. Keep that in mind kids.
Phloating Phlasher
02-07-2024, 08:06
I dont know of a warm & fuzzy one offhand.
But I do believe it should be as fast & painless as possible, because we're supposed to be the guys wearing the white hats.
I have always favored the get what you gave approach,
stab a person, get stabbed
shoot a person , get shot
etc etc
Agree Photo Phlasher. I could debate how you kill a criminal, but not today.
If we had more of THIS plus harsher jail life, elimination of early release, parole, sentencing everyone equally including politicians, lawyers and judges, we would have much less crime and corruption.
I read the county sheriff's dept list of who they have in jail, released, and prior arrest. A lot of these offender's are arrested for the same thing over and over and over (usually drug related). Some individuals fill up a whole page with their repeat crimes and arrest. At some point it should be realized that these people are NOT going to change nor ever fit into a friendly society.
Even if a person were to change though it does not change the crimes they have committed.
I can't think of a single crime against a victim that can actually be repaid.
Crimes involving simply the use of drugs involve countless man hours arresting them and housing them in prison at taxpayers expense---are these expenses ever repaid? Then there's personal property theft. Some items can not be repaid/returned. What about car theft and damage to police vehicles in apprehending them. While the ins co may pay for your car, you (and others) still end up paying for it in increased rates.
I don't ever see where the criminal EVER has to pay more than bail, a little time in jail (which does not cost THEM anything) or arrest fines.
You can buy the antidote for fentanyl overdose at the pharmacy or if in the right neighborhood, at a vending machine. Doesn't seem like a good way to discourage drug use.
Vern Humphrey
02-08-2024, 12:20
Safe O2 levels fall between 19.5% to 23.5%. Anything that pushes the oxygen beyond those levels can or will kill you. It depends upon how far and how long. Maybe using CO2 has some side effects like nausea or something? I donno why it isn't considered.
The one person that I have seen who died of CO Showed no signs even being aware that anything was happening.
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