Posted on 08/26/2023 2:39:43 PM PDT by Libloather
A murderer who killed a preacher's wife in 1988 is set to become the first death row inmate in America to be executed with nitrogen.
Alabama officials want to put Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58, to death by nitrogen hypoxia - forcing him to breathe only nitrogen, depriving them of oxygen and causing them to die.
Several states have authorized the method, which is said to be painless, but it has still never been used.
Critics have said authorities would be 'experimenting with a never before used method - but even Smith has said he would prefer death by nitrogen to a lethal injection.
The Alabama attorney general's office on Friday asked the state Supreme Court to set an execution date for Smith. The court filing indicated Alabama plans to put him to death by nitrogen hypoxia.
Nitrogen makes up 78% of the air inhaled by humans and is harmless when inhaled with oxygen. Proponents of the new method have theorized it would be painless.
Alabama authorized the method in 2018 amid a shortage of drugs used to carry out lethal injections, but the state has not attempted to use it until now to carry out a death sentence.
Oklahoma and Mississippi have also authorized nitrogen hypoxia, but have not used it.
The disclosure that Alabama is ready to use nitrogen hypoxia is expected to set off a new round of legal battles over the constitutionality of the method.
Smith was one of two men paid $1,000 each to murder Elizabeth Sennett on behalf of her preacher husband, Charles Sennett Sr., who was in debt and wanted to collect life insurance money.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
From the second sentence of the original posting: “...forcing him to breathe only nitrogen, depriving them of oxygen and causing them to die”.
It won’t be painless death, not to say he deserves one. Breathing nitrogen will be no different than breathing any other inert gas like , say CO2. Think breathing into a plastic bag. It will hurt for a while until he passes out.
They should bring back public hanging. That also causes death from lack of oxygen.
Alabama's chair was "yellow mama". Still around somewhere gathering dust.
Whatever. I already knew there would no oxygen. That’s all I was saying. I get so tired of mindless “gotcha” Poindexters.
If it is all you are breathing you will die
Precisely
35 years for the victim to get justice.
Justice delayed is justice denied.
This is obscene.
Nitrous oxide causes the same anoxia. Forget to add oxygen to the mix in anesthesia and it’s deadly. I took a hit of straight nitrogen in the pulmonary function lab in college. Everything went black in two seconds. It’s like the hypobaric chamber they uses to euthanize small animals. Actually it’s a very humane method.
In the absence of oxygen he will take deeper and deeper breaths, in gasps. The heart will start pounding trying to get more blood to his brain. Blood pressure will shoot up. Eventually he will suffocate to death. This is no way a painless death. Sodium Thiopental (one drug injection) is probably the most humane. Puts you to sleep and then you die in your sleep.
I agree with hour sentiments.
I was not arguing about this particular bastard, but about the physiological effects of asphyxiation.
Good points. That’s exactly how pilots pass out when they can’t get masks on.
Good to hear that states have started going with this. I've been an advocate of using nitrogen for years. It removes almost all the objections about 'cruel and unusual' punishment from the equation. Folks who die from nitrogen hypoxia don't even know they've died. OSHA has all kinds of regulations for places that deal with nitrogen, because it can kill so easily, and your body doesn't even know it's dying, because no CO2 builds up in your system.
LOL.
Oh, you, and your science and evidence and stuff.
Don't you know some people just want to believe the worst?
You know, to appear smart?
Americans are so fat these days, hangings would likely result in decapitations.
Not that this wouldn't be cool as well.
The body's regulatory systems are going to be screaming “More air” (i.e., “more oxygen”) and no matter how hard he breathes the body will be shrieking “more air”.Sorry, that's 100 percent wrong. There only mechanism for the body to signal a lack of O2 is the brain slowly and painlessly shutting down for the lack. What you are thinking about is the body reacting to the increase in CO2 in suffocation events such as drowning or being shut in an air tight chamber.
How do we know this? For one, people have died in empty oil tanks being cleaned using volatile stuff that displaces oxygen -- the worker just stops and drops. But there is more. During an episode of the TV series The Body In Question the star of the show went onto a closed circuit air system with a CO2 scrubber, and on camera just faded out without reporting any pain. (And was revived by paramedics pumping O2 at high volume.)
The only reason suicide by helium was popular was that tanks of helium were readily available at party stores. You can't just walk into a store and buy a cylinder of compressed N2.
There's more, but the pain of friends dying from other means of accomplishing O2 deprivation, I won't go there.
Wow. You might want to do some research before making such incredibly stupid comments.
Let him have his last cigarette while they’re at it.
No. That's not how it works. It is the build up of CO2 in your system that causes the suffocation response. If you walk into a room with a pure nitrogen atmosphere, you'll simply collapse and dies without even knowing you are dying unless you have a lot of training regarding the symptoms. We know a lot about this because of industrial processes that can create a situation like that.
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