Alabama is seeking to become the first state to execute a prisoner by making him breathe pure nitrogen

Alabama is seeking to become the first state to execute a prisoner by making him breathe pure nitrogen.

The Alabama attorney general’s office on Friday asked the state Supreme Court to set an execution date for death row inmate Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58. The court filing indicated Alabama plans to put him to death by nitrogen hypoxia, an execution method that is authorized in three states but has never been used.

Nitrogen hypoxia is caused by forcing the inmate to breathe only nitrogen, depriving them of oxygen and causing them to die. Nitrogen makes up 78% of the air inhaled by humans and is harmless when inhaled with oxygen. While proponents of the new method have theorized it would be painless, opponents have likened it to human experimentation.

  • 30mag@lemmy.world
    2·
    10 months ago

    It was a severe form of a condition called pulmonary edema, which can induce the feeling of suffocation or drowning.

    I don’t understand how we have problems with people dying in the streets from opioid overdoses or mixing benzos and alcohol, but the government can’t find a way to kill people without drowning them in their own blood.

    • DocMcStuffin@lemmy.world
      4·
      10 months ago

      Because the cruelty is the point. Nitrogen asphyxiation has been known for a long time. The Sarco suicide pod uses it because it’s a peaceful death. The whole reason it hasn’t been adopted is because they want the condemned to suffer.