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Oklahoma plans to start carrying out executions with nitrogen gas, a method that has never been used in the U.S. but that some states have already approved amid difficulties with lethal injections.
At a news conference Wednesday, Oklahoma Atty. Gen. Mike Hunter and Corrections Director Joe M. Allbaugh said that over the next few months the state would develop a protocol for using nitrogen.
[...] In recent years, Oklahoma and other states have struggled to obtain the drugs needed for lethal injections, the most common execution method but one that has increasingly faced scrutiny.
In 2015, a state court put a moratorium on executions in Oklahoma after a series of botched executions, including one in which an inmate convulsed for 43 minutes before dying and another in which the wrong drug was administered.
Oklahoma is poised to become the first state to use nitrogen gas in executions
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Snotnose on Friday March 16 2018, @02:10AM (58 children)
I've been asking for years why they need hard to get chemicals that need to be administered in a certain dose in a certain order, and still fail a lot? Why not just pump CO2, CO, or nitrogen into the chamber and let the prisoner go to sleep. Hell, do it while he's eating his final meal. He'll think he's just gonna take a short nap before the proceedings start.
I like how the article says "we may have to get a face mask". Why? The chamber is sealed, just pump the gas in, wait, pump the air back in and be done with it. It's not like you're using insecticides or anything.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @02:12AM
I want MDMA with my nitro.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday March 16 2018, @02:22AM
Disagree. Just like the American snipers in Vietnam and elsewhere allow their prey to finish their meals before death, you must allow the prisoner to finish theirs. It gives them more fuel and opportunity to make gloriously flippant and recorded-for-history remarks.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by KilroySmith on Friday March 16 2018, @02:37AM (44 children)
Because it's more effective to go from air, to pure nitrogen, in as short a period as possible, and it's hard to change all the gas in a room from air to nitrogen in a short period of time.
Americans buy billions of dollars worth of CPAP machines every year; every one of those would make for a cheap, safe, humane way to execute. I just wish that we had the wisdom to execute only the actually guilty, and not just the legally guilty (who mostly turn out to be black).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @02:51AM
Sort of, it's the reversal that's probably more helpful. You can displace the necessary oxygen with other gasses fairly quickly, but going back to an environment that prison officials can breath in is substantially easier if you're displacing the oxygen with nitrogen.
Even better would probably be a mixture of CO2 and N2 to make that switch back even more efficient.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by julian on Friday March 16 2018, @02:51AM (42 children)
That's why I am always, without exception, against capital punishment in all cases. Any deviation from that standard of total prohibition will, eventually, lead to executing innocent people. The only acceptable number of innocent people murdered by the state is zero; hence, no death penalty--ever.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @03:07AM (11 children)
The death penalty really only makes sense in places and times where you can't ensure that convicted criminals will serve out their sentences without escaping.
Back during the old west, where that was the case, having the death penalty was a practical necessity. But, the reality is that those days are long gone and in most, if not all, countries, the authorities are capable of keeping prisoners locked up for the rest of their lives if need be.
That being said, I do think there's a reasonable argument to be made for executing high level cartel members that have demonstrated that they can't be kept locked up.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @08:08AM (2 children)
The USA is not capable of keeping prisoners locked up for the rest of their lives if need be.
All it takes is one judge saying the prison is too crowded, and hoards of criminals are set free upon our streets. All it takes is one clueless/evil democratic governor/president saying "they look like nice boys", and out come the criminals.
Thus today, in the USA, having the death penalty is a practical necessity.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by pendorbound on Friday March 16 2018, @02:22PM
Cite one example in which a US judge has ordered that murderers be released from prison due to overcrowding.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @05:53PM
People such as the above are why we can't have nice things. They ate tough on everything except themselves, and it results in a shitty society.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday March 16 2018, @02:13PM (7 children)
How about when you don't want to spend outrageous amounts of money supporting a prisoner for life? Why should a heinous criminal get a free ride at considerable expense to the society they damaged for the rest of their natural life?
The only reason NOT to execute such criminals is that it's historically proven basically impossible to ensure innocent people aren't accidentally executed as well, and at least falsely imprisoned people can potentially be released to live out the remainder of their life.
Perhaps we could reach a compromise - make all prisoners join work camps performing community service valued at the cost of keeping them imprisoned, with the option of death if they don't feel like working. That'd also present a definite cash value for a starting point of restitution in the case of false imprisonment - back pay for all the work you did. Of course, it would present a problem for individuals genuinely incapable of making any productive contribution - but such individuals are actually exceptionally rare.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @02:42PM (3 children)
The money is spent either way. Either you spend it in court making really sure that the guilty is guilty or you spend it on prison time.
Lowering the standards would save money, but what kind of monster is going to go along with that?
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday March 16 2018, @04:23PM (2 children)
I should be clear that I am personally opposed to the death penalty, specifically because of the rampant abuse and corruption readily apparent in the legal system. But there are good arguments to be made in its favor, especially if you could somehow mitigate those problems.
Not necessarily - give them say 5-10 years to appeal and prove their innocence, which they would presumably be trying to do anyway, and after which point it's very unlikely they could succeed on such a cold case. If you haven't gotten off "lifer row" by then, you probably never will, and why should society continue to support you? Brutal, yes. But that's the nature of the law - making someone spend their life in a cage is arguably even more brutal. And innocent people die all the time - one of the tragic realities of a universe that has no apparent bias towards fairness.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @04:59PM (1 child)
Except the whole reason that most people are executed is because they were found guilty of the premeditated killing of another innocent person. But apparently, some people are OK with that, at least when it is done in the name of "protecting" others.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday March 16 2018, @05:32PM
Quite. The problem is there is a very real disconnect between being found guilty, and actually *being* guilty.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @06:27PM (2 children)
You currently spend 3 times the amount of keeping a prisoner locked up for life when executing them. It really is cheaper not to kill them, so do you have a better argument than you don't want to spend the money on them, because that argument leads to abolishing the death penalty.
That is called slavery. Abolishing slavery was generally considered to be a good thing, and you want to bring it back?
(Score: 2) by mendax on Friday March 16 2018, @06:57PM
The Thirteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which abolished slavery, allows for slavery as punishment for a crime. Take a look [wikipedia.org].
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday March 16 2018, @07:08PM
Under the current system, yes, it's quite expensive to execute someone. If something changed, for example if someone invented a highly reliable lie detector so that you could simply ask the accused "Did you do X?" and "Why?" and then be at least as confident of their guilt or innocence, things could change dramatically.
I'm in favor of making able-bodied individuals earn their keep. And yes, there are unfavorable comparisons with slavery, except that every guilty person chose to be there through their actions. The innocent are still a problem, as are the potential perverse incentives to increase incarceration - probably no worse than existing for-profit prisons, but those are already causing serious problems.
Heck, as far as slavery is concerned, the real horror was introduced quite recently along with the African slave trade - the idea that race determined suitability for slavery, and that someone could of be born a slave. Historically slaves have mostly been the same race as their masters, and their children were free, with the opportunity to become full citizens in societies where that was relevant.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @04:07AM (7 children)
Sorry man, you're wrong. the only cure for the psychopath is death, the polar opposite of what we do with them now.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @04:42AM (1 child)
Yes, right now you elect them as presidents.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @08:34PM
This isn't insightful? You should be embarrassed for wasting your time writing it. This is pushing only agenda and opinion, not facts. Why aren't people modding only truthfully supported posts instead of just someone vomiting drivel onto the page?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @06:51AM (4 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @07:21AM (1 child)
Then let's grant that wish.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday March 16 2018, @01:27PM
But without the actual fame.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 17 2018, @03:10AM (1 child)
See, that's the problem. Modern society gives them the fame, fortune, and power instead of turning their backs. These high rewards are making psychopathy a dominant trait in humans.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday March 20 2018, @11:27AM
That doesn't logically work unless they do a bunch of breeding while on death row.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @04:09AM (3 children)
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @09:38AM (2 children)
Please accompany me over here to the "I would prefer death" window. Please fill out this form and then push the buzzer once it is signed and dated. Before you begin, could you do me one small favor? Can move over just a smidgen? You need to be standing on the red "X". Thanks so much.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday March 16 2018, @05:50PM (1 child)
The word "window" actually prompted an image in my head: instead of securely locking up the death penalty prisoners and then having trouble executing them, how about putting them on the highest floor, and each time they go for a walk, they pass by a door that leads to a five-story drop (with a safety to make sure accidents don't happen, and a tarp at the bottom)...
The state has decided you should die, and if you are not fighting it (psychos and/or overwhelming evidence), you are allowed to regain control of your own death and save us money and logistics.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday March 16 2018, @07:25PM
And if it's actually inmate #2 that decided you should take a flight? After all, moderating violence between inmates is one of the big reasons for individual cells.
Still, it seems like a suicide booth would make for a valuable addition to pretty much any prison, and it should be easy enough to make it so you have to lock the door and then intentionally activate it, so nobody else can make the choice for you. Nitrogen asphyxiation is probably still one of the cheaper and cleaner ways to go about it though - nitrogen is really easy to make: just burn a carbon-rich fuel in air until no more will burn, and then pass the air through an alkaline filter to separate out the resulting CO2. Any CO impurities aren't a problem since killing the person breathing it is the whole point.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @05:45AM (5 children)
Do you support prison sentences? If so, what is the acceptable number of innocent people kidnapped by the state?
Do you support fines? If so, what is the acceptable number of innocent people robbed by the state?
Do you support corporal punishment? If so, what is the acceptable number of innocent people battered by the state?
I don't think any punishment of the innocent is acceptable, and yet it is an inevitable consequence of any system for punishing the guilty. This argument seems no more persuasive for capital punishment than for the alternative punishments (typically imprisonment for life or multiple decades) for capital offenses.
The notion that capital punishment is irreversible, while a wrongly fined or imprisoned man may be freed and made whole, is appealing, and may even be true for small fines and short prison sentences. But how do you make a man whole when you've stolen whole decades from his life after a wrong conviction? Additionally, there's no reason to believe the few wrongful convictions we see overturned represent all or most miscarriages of justice; they're more likely a small minority. It seems clear that the majority of innocents wrongly convicted of capital crimes would instead be wrongfully imprisoned for life, but will still never receive any recognition of their innocence nor any attempt to make them whole.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Friday March 16 2018, @07:52AM (3 children)
Yes.
If someone innocent was imprisoned and it is later found that he's innocent, he can be freed and compensated. With death penalty this is not possible.
Yes.
See above.
No.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by julian on Friday March 16 2018, @03:58PM (1 child)
You answered exactly the way I would have. Why is this so hard for some people?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday March 16 2018, @05:29PM
Because "some people" are actually sociopaths. And we seem to attract a disproportionate number of "some people" on this site, Madokami help us...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @07:34PM
He can*, but he probably won't. You can't expect a system that is fallible when convicting the innocent to infallibly exonerate them afterward. But even assuming, for the sake of argument, that our system is very good at detecting wrongful convictions and compensating them, surely some small fraction will slip through the cracks, right?
How many innocents being imprisoned and not freed and compensated is acceptable? Why is this not zero?
*although "compensated" doesn't mean "made whole". This idea that you can take decades from a man's life, institutionalize him so he has to relearn how to function as a free man, then magically erase the harm done with a fat check and "We square, bro?"... I just don't understand how anyone can possibly believe this.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @12:04PM
I support summary executions, but only for Americans.
Actually I support extermination of all non-native Americans.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @06:04AM (3 children)
Are you also against any sort of possibly lethal military or police action?
Unless you're deontologically opposed to all killing, there are thresholds of false positives that are acceptable. The society of the US tolerates a lot of killing of innocents who haven't even had the chance at due process. What society should really ask itself is: what is the goal and what costs are we willing to assume?
The death penalty is not cost effective for any of the publicly stated goals that I'm aware of (e.g. public safety, legal/imprisonment costs, and crime deterrence) and it isn't even a cost effective form of vengeance or bloodlust.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by fyngyrz on Friday March 16 2018, @04:45PM (2 children)
No, society should stop pretending this is okay and quit killing people it isn't forced to kill, which category includes:
People actively committing violence against it at the very time the opportunity arises to kill them, and where killing them is the only way to stop them.
Well, that was easy!
If someone is thought to have committed a crime, then they should be made to make restitution to whatever degree possible short of violence against their person. To the victim(s), if any, or to society if there are no remaining victims. Of course, if there is no victim - if you engaged in informed, adult, consensual sale or utilization of drugs or prostitution, for instance - there should be no crime.
If the convicted are found innocent at some point - DNA evidence, etc. - then they should be significantly compensated, where said compensation is taken from the judge, jury and prosecution who were responsible for their false conviction, and then action should be taken dismissing the judge, disbarring the prosecution team, and disallowing the jury members from ever serving on a jury again.
It should not be easy for people given power to seriously damage people's lives and then just walk away from it scot-free. Ever. With power should come responsibility. Right now, the system is all-power, zero-responsibility.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @06:28PM (1 child)
Society does not follow your idealism of never killing unless forced.
Practically all innocent killing by police could be stopped if they were not equipped with lethal force.
Practically all innocent killing by the military could be stopped by maintaining strictly defensive strategies and policies of non-intervention.
The deaths of these innocents at the hands of the state are a tolerated cost for the sake of achieving their purposes. Society could spend more resources to achieve those same purposes at a lower cost of innocent lives (e.g. a large non-lethal police presence or a focus on precise attacks that do not produce "collateral damage") or by dropping the purposes in the face of those costs (e.g. letting suspects get away or by retreating from military interests), but it doesn't.
Society takes a consequentialist view of innocent deaths at the hands of the state.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Saturday March 17 2018, @09:46AM
I know. The GP knew as well; hence, both of our posts were couched as "society should do", not "society does" or "society does not."
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @09:03AM (3 children)
There is another option: Equality before the law.
When the state murders an innocent person, the judge and jury that ordered the murder must be tried an convicted in accordance with the same laws.
You'd see a lot less use of the death penalty if the judge and jury knew they themselves would be convicted if the verdict was ever shown to be wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @01:50PM (2 children)
Of course this would never be used to intimidate the jury/judge or used for retribution. How about we also include the defense lawyer, who didn't do a good enough job, or the prosecutor, who did too well?
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Friday March 16 2018, @04:46PM
We should definitely do that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @05:04PM
I'd settle just for the prosecutor and anyone who perjured themselves on the stand. It would definitely cut down on the well-documented practice of not turning over exculpatory evidence and bad eyewitness identifications.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by dwilson on Friday March 16 2018, @05:41PM (1 child)
And it's better that ten guilty men go free than a single innocent man be wrongfully confined. Paraphrasing someone [bartleby.com] with that, of course. Myself, I'd lean more towards a thousand than ten.
I can see how some would disagree with the above, of course. There's room for lively debate on it. But the death penalty, I'm with you on. Until we can un-kill someone successfully, the only acceptable number of 'oops's is zero. And there's only one way to achieve that at the moment.
- D
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tomtomtom on Saturday March 17 2018, @11:34PM
One reason to support that point of view, not often made explicit, is that as soon as someone is convicted (or even charged) with a crime, everyone else stops looking for the perpetrator - so one innocent man wrongfully convicted is AT THE SAME TIME a guilty man or men going free. Every innocent person punished is not only a victim of a terrible injustice, they also represent a guilty person (or perhaps more than one in a conspiracy) left to roam free and potentially reoffend. The death penalty makes this worse - the state has such a large incentive to appear not to make mistakes in applying the death penalty that reopening cases is that much higher. For example, consider Timothy Evans [wikipedia.org] - his case was one of the motivating factors in the eventual abolition of the death penalty in the UK.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 17 2018, @02:11AM
What? Even for perpetrators of islam?
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Tuesday March 20 2018, @03:43PM
Eh? How is that relevant? I happen to agree, but KilroySmith wasn't talking about the risk of executing innocents.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @03:01AM (1 child)
There are many ways to administer dihydrogen monoxide:
1. as a gas, it is very deadly, rapidly destroying tissue
2. it can be delivered as two separate precursor components, totally harmless, and then reacted in the lungs to produce the DHMO (my favorite method, because it goes KABOOM)
3. as a solid, it can be fired into the chest
4. the liquid works fine; this has been tested by ISIS
(Score: 2) by cocaine overdose on Friday March 16 2018, @01:17PM
5. Burn a mountain laurel/rhododendron bush while you're scavenging for kindling.
6. Eat the leaves of the aforementioned.
7. Grind up the leaves, extract the monoxide with acid, soak it up with a tampon, and shove it up your ass
8. Extract the monoxide with acid, then reduce the liquid in a boiling pot, until you're left with a thin clear layer of powder, snort the powder
9. The ole hose in the muffler trick
(Score: 4, Informative) by Whoever on Friday March 16 2018, @04:06AM
Can't use CO2, because the subject would experience suffocation. Nitrogen or CO just put the subject to sleep.
(Score: 2) by The Shire on Friday March 16 2018, @06:58AM (5 children)
CO2 would be an absolutely horrible gas to use. It is not a lack of oxygen that makes a person feel like they can't breath, it's the level of CO2. So using CO2 would be a very painful way to go - you absolutely would NOT just "go to sleep". You would choke and gasp and thrash. This is precisely why they are talking about using Nitrogen. When you displace the air with an inert gas like nitrogen or argon or helium, the body is completely unaware that it is no longer getting oxygen. In such a case you simply pass out within seconds. And since nitrogen already composes nearly 80% of the air we breath, it's the perfect gas to use. Essentially you just need a unit that removes oxygen before it enters the chamber. Quick. Quiet. Humane.
(Score: 4, Funny) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday March 16 2018, @09:32AM (2 children)
AAAAAAHHHHH! You mean we are all breathing execution gas all the time? EVERYBODY PANIC! BAN NITROGEN! AAAAHHHH!
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday March 16 2018, @01:18PM (1 child)
I've got my towel...you got yours?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday March 16 2018, @06:19PM
I'm taking my chances with the Nitrogen: I've felt the damage humans can do with poetry.
(Score: 2) by zafiro17 on Friday March 16 2018, @06:52PM (1 child)
Where rapists and murderers are concerned, I am fully supportive of killing them in the same way they killed their victims, or at least causing them equal pain. That guy who raped and strangled a seven year girl ... why should I give a single shit if he thrashes and experiences pain? What about how she felt in her final moments?
For bonus points, I would film and publicize it. Youtube channel, at least. Don't want to get executed the way this guy did? Then don't do the crime.
All this concern for the welfare of criminals is inexplicable. Some of these guys I could stand to see be executed by chainsaw sodomy, and I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. Nitrogen gas, ha. How about gasoline and a match? For Youtube?
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Shire on Saturday March 17 2018, @02:44AM
To be honest, I think a humane death is more about us than them. We need to believe that we are not the violent ones and that it's enough to take away everything the criminal ever had, or ever will have, and to permanently remove the threat they presented to society.
(Score: 2) by eravnrekaree on Friday March 16 2018, @09:03PM
CO or Nitrogen. CO2 causes painful gasping sensations.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Saturday March 17 2018, @12:09AM
Why doesn't the US just use Zyklon B when it wants to kill inmates? It's got a proven track record.