Posted on 02/08/2023 6:46:28 AM PST by CheshireTheCat
It was the best of intentions. It was the worst of intentions.
As the 19th century gave way to the 20th, the forefathers’ standard means of dispatching an evildoer — a length of rope or a shot of lead — were under re-examination by a technophilic nation convinced its science could find a way to kill a man without inconveniencing him.
The first great American contribution — if you can call it that — to the the art of killing me softly was the electric chair, and its debut did not impress everyone.
Out west, grossed out by electrocution and inspired by the pestilent fogs that had lately enveloped World War I trenches, the Nevada legislature cottoned to the brainchild of one Dr. Allen McLean Hamilton to say it with cyanide.
Unfortunately, the logistics of billowing a plume of lethal gas directly into the prisoner’s cell to take the condemned asleep and unawares — another ostensible mercy that would have opened a path towards a Japan-like system of perpetual apprehension followed by sudden execution — proved insoluble; so, they had to build a little airtight room and give the procedure all the familiar ceremonial trappings....
(Excerpt) Read more at executedtoday.com ...
The entire idea of a gas chamber using poison gas is insane. I have to wonder why they even thought the poison was necessary. It has to be the visuals of it. If you want to kill someone with a gas, the one to use is nitrogen. Eevery breath you take is already 78% nitrogen. If you want to use a ‘gas chamber’, all you have to do is feed in pure nitrogen. The existing gas can be vented out to the atmosphere through a one-way valve that exits the roof. You’d have an oxygen sensor in the room. Once it has read less than 2% oxygen for 15 minutes, you start pumping in ambient air. Once the O2 is at 20%, you open the door and wheel the corpse out. You don’t have to deal with poisons, decontamination, or any of that crap. You just wheel out the corpse, who only knows he’s dead because he’s roasting in hell, and wheel in the next condemned prisoner. The whole process would take at most half an hour from start to finish. No muss. No fuss. People are absolutely stupid about the death penalty.
There are all kinds of OSHA rules for areas that can have excessive N2 levels. That’s because you can walk into a room with 90% N2, and you’ll suffocate and die before you even realize anything is wrong.
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