Alabama Has a Horrible New Way of Killing People on Death Row

The New York Times ^ | September 18, 2023 | By Bernard E. Harcourt

[aculeus]

After botching a series of executions by lethal injection, the State of Alabama is planning to use nitrogen gas to put condemned prisoners to death. The first execution will amount to a human experiment, because neither Alabama nor any other state has ever tried to kill people this way.

Late last month, prison guards distributed the state’s new execution protocol to prisoners in solitary confinement on Alabama’s death row. One hundred and sixty men and five women await execution in Alabama. They would be secured to a gurney, their nose and mouth would be covered by a mask, and nitrogen would be pumped into their lungs until they suffocate.

Alabama is seeking to conduct the first such experiment on Kenneth Eugene Smith, who already survived a botched execution. Last November, Mr. Smith spent hours strapped to a lethal-injection gurney as the execution team needled around in several locations to insert two intravenous lines without success, before calling off the execution

[aculeus]

Doctor Guillotin, call your office.

[HYPOCRACY]

Draw and quarter them.

[rktman]

Not quite sure how a lethal injection can be bungled. Any time I’ve had major surgery I could have been gone and never known it.

[Joe 6-pack]

For the first time since the beginning of COVID, I can finally consider myself pro-mask.

[kiryandil]

[Spok]

No prisoner has ever survived a firing squad.

[albie]

...” because neither Alabama nor any other state has ever tried to kill people this way.”

...let’s 1st discuss what “way” the killer killed people.

[ImJustAnotherOkie]

Firing squad is more dramatic, but this will do.

[where's_the_Outrage?]

Killers should be put to death in the same manner as their victims.

[dfwgator]

After botching a series of executions by lethal injection,

Did they die? Then it wasn't "botched".

[libh8er]

Why does the NYT not sympathize with the families of victims who are missing a family member each ?

[dfwgator]

No prisoner has ever survived a firing squad.

[cgbg]

The notion of “humane” executions is bizarre.

Do it cheap and do it quick—firing squads.

[algore]

carbon dioxide, nitrogen, helium, nitrous oxide, who cares ?

the end result is the same.

Maybe water boarding till death they depart might work.

[BigFreakinToad]

send them to Chicongo for the weekend.

[O6ret]

So why is it “horrible”?

[FlingWingFlyer]

I think giving the convict a gun and locking him in his cell with some fairytail reading drag queens until he/she commits suicide would work nicely.

[Wonder Warthog]

Ludicrous anti-death penalty article. Many people have died by asphyxiation from breathing nitrogen. Admittedly, those deaths were accidental, and not deliberate, but the data is available.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

After botching a series of executions by lethal injection, the State of Alabama is planning to use nitrogen gas to put condemned prisoners to death.

Horrible? Nitrogen is humane and painless - a far less horrifying and painful death than the victims of the murderers got, far easier than the deaths most of us will get as a result of old age, and far too good for the murderers who will be executed.

The body won't even experience feelings of suffocation, since it will be able to expel carbon dioxide - the murderers will just go to sleep and never wake up. When my time comes, I hope for a death that easy.

[Ouderkirk]

We have more than enough heroin and/or fentanyl in evidence lockups to off every one of them easily.