Alabama is set to perform the second-ever nitrogen gas execution in the United States on Thursday.
Alan Eugene Miller, 59, was sentenced to death for the 1999 murders of his then-coworkers Lee Holdbrooks and Christoper Scott Yancy, and his former supervisor Terry Lee Jarvis.
Miller was to be executed in September 2022 via lethal injection, but it was called off after officials had trouble inserting an intravenous line to administer the fatal drugs and were concerned they would not be able to do so before the death warrant expired.
Per the John Oliver episode on the death penalty, there’s substantial evidence that murder by nitrogen suffocation is extremely painful.
Edit: the episode and timestamp in question. Nitrogen hypoxia (edit: at least as it’s being performed by these ass-backward hicks) is not painless as some commenters are suggesting. Section lasts from about 23:00 to 24:45. An excerpt from the Wikipedia article properly sourced to the Associated Press, BBC News, and the Montgomery Advertiser (local Alabama newspaper):
And to be clear, the only reason these sick fucks are using nitrogen is because it’s becoming increasingly difficult to source
potassium chloridethe barbituate and paralytic for lethal injections because the optics for companies supplying them is abysmal.This is simply not true. Nitrogen is not the issue, CO2 is. If you breathe too much CO2, your body panicks.
So do it properly and the worst you get is a slight headache. But since you are „high“, you don’t care anymore.
Nitrogen has become this Schrödingers gas.
When used in executions it’s extremely painful and terrible. When used for assisted Euthanasia it’s calm and painless.
So what is it? Not arguing that death penalty is fine. But the debate of the method shouldn’t be riddled with lies as it poisons the debate climate.
In the case of the first nitrogen execution, they did dick all to vent away the carbon dioxide he was exhaling, so it eventually saturated the gas he was able to breathe and his lungs wouldn’t have been able to get rid of any more. When you hold your breath, the discomfort and urge to breathe again comes from the CO2 buildup rather than the lack of oxygen.
If the exhaled gas gets vented properly, then there’s no discomfort. That they didn’t get this part right for the execution suggests malice, or at the very least extreme negligence because it doesn’t take expertise to understand this, just a little bit of depth in knowing how suffocation works. Which you’d figure people designing and carrying out an execution would seek.
A big part of it was scientific illiteracy. There was talk at the time about “protecting the prison officers from exposure to the gas”.
They were treating it like a poison.
Which adds stupidity to the malice.
Assuming that “concern” was in good faith in the first place. I believe it was a bad faith pretext for not venting the gas because it’s a well known fact that nitrogen makes up a significant portion of the atmosphere. If they were really worried about the nitrogen displacing enough oxygen to be dangerous, I can think of several ways to eliminate that risk even if I play along and accept that it’s possible.
Instead they went with the stupidest and most cruel option. Make sure there’s no ventilation on the mask, and that it had a tight seal before turning on the gas. A gas they were treating like a deadly poison.
And since there was no ventilation at all, there was no gas flow. There was no oxygen displacement. Just the CO2 buildup.
Ah yeah that would be cruel as fuck. Are they doing anything different this time or are they going to torture someone else to death?
Having seen firsthand what happens when someone unknowingly enters a hypoxic enclosed space, I think the difference is foreknowledge. Thrashing sounds like acidosis from holding one’s breath. I was helping an acquaintance work on his old steel boat. There was a watertight compartment. The risk of steel-enclosed spaces is that rusty steel in an enclosed space can consume all of the oxygen, leaving only nitrogen rich air.
He opened the hatch and, before I could stop him, he just strode on in like it was nothing. He was unconscious before I could get to him, maybe ten seconds. Fortunately, he was near enough to the hatch that I could just reach in and grab him, rather than trying to find an air tank and regulator, and then put it on.
He recovered just fine, but had a terrible headache. He didn’t remember anything about it. He didn’t thrash. There was no drama. He walked in and fell unconscious. Lucky for him it was a small space, so the bulkheads kept him from doing a full header into the steel deck.
When you take a deep breath of it and die the death you’ve been wanting it’s painless. When you want to live your entire body thrashes in pain akin to drowning as you struggle to not breathe in.
This is part of the problem with “humane” execution. If you slip it into meals without prisoner knowledge death row prisoners will starve themselves to death. Start nitrogen bagging sleeping prisoners and they’ll do everything in their power to never sleep. These people want to live and have an intense instinct to survive by any means. Suicidal people can often overcome it, but everyone else will generally endure any pain for a tiny amount of time.
I think the difference is that right-to-die advocates have gone to insane lengths to ensure beyond a reasonable doubt that their setups which administer the lethal substance do so painlessly, so as to ensure that the person willingly choosing to die spends their last few moments not in pain anymore.
Prisons don’t seem to have the same standard in mind with their own setups. If anything, they seem to want to maximize suffering for the sake of the spectacle they’ve arranged the execution around.
Do suicide pods vent CO²?
Nitrogen Hypoxia will render you unconscious in under a minute when its almost pure n2 and exhaust is accounted for to remove co2. The last execution was done on such a sloppily manner you seriously have to question if the procedure was done in such a way that to ensure maximum suffering. The mask used didn’t allow co2 to be vented away, their method of execution was only one step up from wrapping a bag around his head.
A proper way to do it, probably not done because cost and some stupid unnecessary procedure, would be to construct a booth around a chair with exhaust fans near the base and a supply of pure n2 coming from the top. If the o2 and co2 can be removed quickly enough the body can’t tell its not getting enough to breath and loss of consciousness can happen quickly with death following in minutes. Smarter Every Day has a video on Hypoxia where Dusten, the content creator, is an altitude simulator where they are lowering the air pressure to simulate high altitude and by extension just a few short steps from a death chamber. The host goes through several stages of hypoxia and had to be told point blank to put his oxygen mask back on several times before he risks passing out. At no point does he show signs of pain or distress and if anything acting almost like hes high.
Building a chamber like this for executions would have been far more humane but they didn’t want to put more thought or money into it than strangling a guy so instead you get that botch job Alabama used.
“Hey, should we use any of the ready to go setups the right-to-die people have put considerable thought in to?”
“No, let’s just wing it with shit we already have. What could go wrong?”
Also because at that point you’ve let Alabama have a dedicated gas chamber which is obviously a bad idea
potassium chloride is just sodium-free salt, I can get it at my supermarket, the issue is getting the other 2 drugs for the cocktail
If done properly it should be completely painless and almost unnoticeable. I have a feeling they’re fucking these up on purpose.
Never attribute to malice what can be explained by plain old dumbfuckery. These podunk inbreds may do it for kicks (some of them are definitely malicious enough), but I think it’s pretty likely that they got someone named Cooter to do the final installation.
This information is brought to you by a drunk that looks like he could be named Cooter. Or possibly Cletus.
While I certainly subscribe to Hanlon’s Razor, there’s definitely indications that some people think that causing additional suffering before death is wholly righteous. As though said inflicted suffering serves any real purpose beyond their fantasy. Very primitive, yet very human.
Mother Teresa vibes?
I guess it depends on the implementation of proper removal of oxygen and maintaining low level of CO² as its the method used for the sarco pod.
CO2 buildup is the part that cause pain, panic, and visceral reaction. There’s a reason they purge CO2 from the assisted suicide pods that also completely surround the body in an air-tight enclosure.
The violent reaction can be explained by a buildup of CO2 which is partially how the body signals the brain to breathe more and heavier. This is not usually observed with inert gas deaths which is why industrial inert gas accidents often have people passing out and dying without even noticing.
Is there? I’ve always heard that inert gas asphyxiation is basically unnoticeable, which is why it’s so deadly in accidents, especially when people try to rescue someone and fall victim themselves.
The human body doesn’t have a “low oxygen” sense, only a “high CO2” sense, so nitrogen and other gases shouldn’t trigger the feeling of suffocation.
You are correct
But these chuckle fucks want to save money.
They don’t flood a whole room with nitrogen, they just use an oxygen mask that’s flowing a lot if nitrogen.
The person is still breathing in a lot of what they exhale, which makes it very painful for them
I found two case studies of people using face masks to commit suicide, and more using plastic bags, and it seemed to work for them. I think it can be done painlessly, but clearly Alabama is being Alabama.
For the record, I’m against the death penalty entirely, but if we’re going to do it it should be done properly. This is cruelty.
People wanting to kill themselves probably take care to do it.
People who want to die also embrace rather than resist. You could od prisoners on opiates and even addicts will attempt to thrash around so much they’re at risk of bleeding out. These are people who want to live.
Isn’t nitrogen suffocation how the Swiss death pod works?
The difference is the intent of the person, and the way the nitrogen is applied.
In the case of the pod, you have someone who has likely been in pain or some kind of suffering for a long time who is keen for death to release them from their suffering.
In the case of an execution you have someone desperate not to die, by any means possible.
The guy they executed held his breath for a long time, then thrashed around trying to dislodge the mask, managed to get some free air through the improperly sealed mask, and then maybe had a seizure from the lack of oxygen and desperation. The whole thing is just fucked basically.
There’s some reason why they don’t want to use a pod or chamber type set up, although I don’t recall what that reason is.
Inventors of the “Sarco” capsule would seem to disagree with you.
Yeah, I would tentatively agree that nitrogen hypoxia when performed correctly is in fact painless (although we’re also talking about the same Sarco that just got several people arrested by running afoul of Switzerland’s product safety and chemical laws on the first ever test of their capsule). Of course here, whatever method Alabama is using is not painless and caused its first victim intense, prolonged suffering.
Alabama is doing it wrong.
Inventor of the Sarco unit
Nitrogen suffocattion isn’t painless if it’s done completely of nitrogen.
You’re talking about regular oxygen suffocattion caused by decreasing the oxygen available over time.
What you’ve essentially said is “the guillotine is immoral because if you cut 1/10th of the way through, then 1/9th of the way through, then 1/8th and so on… Then it’s REAL painful!!!”
No shit.
I hear ramping up electrocution over a 20 minute period is also not great.