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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: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @02:13AM (27 children)
Every hear of a carbon monoxide detector?
They exist because the human body doesn't rebel dramatically against the stuff.
It just quietly goes to sleep (or continues sleeping).
OTOH, the human body recognizes nitrogen narcosis and attempts to fight it.
What you are planning to do is torture and violates the cruel and unusual thing forbidden by the constitution.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday March 16 2018, @02:19AM (3 children)
This is why we need to bring back the guillotine, or firing squads. Not only are both a more stylish way to die, but quicker and less painful*.
* In the case of the firing squad, we need to allow not just one but all snipers live bullets, but also with full-auto. If you've been sentenced to death, an open-casket funeral is the least of your family's worries.
(Score: 2) by Kawumpa on Friday March 16 2018, @05:06AM (2 children)
Yes, and we should get people like you to clean up the mess afterwards...
(Score: 3, Touché) by DannyB on Friday March 16 2018, @01:34PM (1 child)
America allows immigrants because they will do disgusting jobs no American would ever do. That is why Trump's wives are all immigrants.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 1) by oldmac31310 on Friday March 16 2018, @06:27PM
Ha, ha. Nice one!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday March 16 2018, @02:20AM (5 children)
Uh, it does? Last I heard nitrogen was so dangerous precisely because we *can't* detect it in lethal amounts. It's CO2 that's cruel, as we have hypercapnic reflexes and the buildup of CO2 is what burns, rather than lack of oxygen.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @02:58AM (3 children)
It's not true about the nitrogen. As has been stated by somebody else, that only applies to individuals who have been pressurized and are brought back to normal pressure too quickly. In this context all that's likely to occur is for the individual to pass out quickly and die shortly thereafter. It's probably the most humane way of murdering somebody and very hard to get wrong.
You're right about CO2. CO2 is used to decide how often to breathe, amongst other things, and as such, you're absolutely right about it being cruel to deprive a person of oxygen in that fashion.
CO would also work quite well, but has the downside of being harder to neutralize. With N2, you can just exhaust the air in the chamber to the outside of the building and bring in fresh air and the chamber goes back to habitable in a matter of minutes, depending upon the amount of ventilation. And if you don't get quite enough ventilation, it's unlikely to sicken anybody.
(Score: 4, Informative) by TheRaven on Friday March 16 2018, @12:51PM
It's a little bit more subtle than that. Your breathing reflex is triggered by a response to acidity in receptors in your lungs. You're constantly producing small quantities of alkaline solution that is exposed to the gas in your lungs. When it absorbs enough carbon dioxide to neutralise the alkali then you breathe. The amount of alkali that you produce changes over time based on a much slower feedback cycle linked to oxygen levels in your blood, which is why it's so dangerous going up a mountain quickly: your lungs aren't absorbing as much oxygen as you're used to per lungful but (because of the lower air pressure) you're also absorbing a lot less carbon dioxide and so your breathe reflex isn't triggered. If you overexert yourself you can pass out from oxygen deprivation without ever breathing deeply.
Any gas that produces an acid solution when dissolved in water would trigger your breathe reflex and, if breathing doesn't make it go away, would then trigger your suffocation response. Carbon dioxide is just the most common gas in this category (and the one produced by your body).
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday March 16 2018, @01:36PM (1 child)
How about making that the method of execution?
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday March 16 2018, @06:22PM
It requires big bags of money for the pun.
Even Bond villains gave up on that much logistics.
(Score: 1) by Goghit on Friday March 16 2018, @05:15PM
Yeah, the OP's understanding of nitrogen narcosis is highly flawed. Cause of death in this scenario is hypoxia, the lack of oxygen, a very gently death. Just ask any pilot who has gone through high altitude hypoxic training. CO2 buildup is the primary trigger for breathing, and as long as you keep CO2 flushing out of your system you don't get that panic and smothering sensation as your body yells at you to BREATHE NOW!!!
Nitrogen narcosis needs pressures greater than one atmosphere, you're not going to see an effect just because you've increased the content of the gas you're breathing by 20% at sea level. Furtunate for those of us who have gone through life breathing a mix of 20% oxygen/80% nitrogen in our God-supplied air.
OTOH, permanent one atmosphere nitrogen narcosis might explain certain individuals, see Trump, et al.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @02:22AM (5 children)
Nitrogen narcosis happens to divers. It requires high pressure to drive excess nitrogen into the nerve cell membranes. Unless they'll be doing executions 100 feet under water, that doesn't apply.
Nitrogen narcosis isn't even miserable. It's like taking heroin. Some prisoners would jump at the chance.
Even if nitrogen did cause misery, so what? The supreme court even said it was OK to jab prisoners with needles.
Furthermore, it's not unusual if we do it always, so it can't be "cruel and unusual". It's not cruel either, at least in relation to the crime. (Is a 180 days in prison cruel? It is for jaywalking. The crime matters.)
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday March 16 2018, @02:33AM
Here on land, helium is the most humane option. You can go to your local grocery store and go out in a blaze of glory inflicting barotrauma upon yourself. And die with a chipmunk voice. Reciting Hilter speeches is a lot funnier at 8x the speed.
Carbon monoxide works, sure, but that requires a setup. You have a garage, or a flexible tube to pipe it from your tailpipe into your carriage. And that's very messy and suspicious.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Friday March 16 2018, @08:06AM (1 child)
Interesting interpretation. So according to your interpretation, any cruelty would be legal as punishment if it is done often enough.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday March 16 2018, @05:09PM
Basically. I mean, we sentence people to live out the rest of their lives in a cage on a regular basis - that's pretty damned cruel.
It's when you start imposing cruel punishments against particular individuals (unusually) that you start getting real problems. Person A gets a modest fine, Person B who pissed of the wrong people gets locked in a box listening to Nickleback for 30 years for the same crime - then you have a problem. Which in fact we do already have in many cases: A rich white guy gets caught with a sack of weed he probably gets off with a warning, not even dragged into the legal system. While a poor black man with the same bag of weed may spend many years in prison under "mandatory minimum" sentencing. Not a problem with the legal system per-se, but if you can't trust law enforcement to do their job evenhandedly, then you really should take that into consideration in your legal system.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @08:43AM
Try applying the same argument to ISIS or the Nazis to see why you are wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @02:51PM
I don't think you understand "cruel and unusual" punishment. Cruel is more or less what it sounds like, are we inflicting unnecessary and unreasonable suffering on the convicted. The exact line has changed over the decades so that we don't inflict as much as we used to, but it's still a bit of a problem.
Unusual is about the predictability of consequences when deciding whether or not to convict a crime. If I go out and decide to jaywalk, being handed a life sentence would be unusual. In fact, being handed any sentence at all for only jaywalking would be highly unusual and as such unconstitutional. It may also be cruel, but the fact that it's not expected would bar it without anything else.
In terms of the debate, we don't really know in most cases what it feels like for the majority of death row inmates that do pass out and don't wake up again. There's sometimes spasms that suggest that there's pain, but we don't really know. Which is part of why lawyers keep filing suits, it's also a basis for stopping an execution.
(Score: 5, Informative) by KilroySmith on Friday March 16 2018, @02:30AM (1 child)
This isn't narcosis. It's simple suffocation, but without the sensation of suffocation caused by excess CO2 in the blood. Using a breathing mask, you go from breathing air to breathing pure nitrogen in a single breath; consciousness lasts only seconds after that, and death occurs in minutes. All without any sensation, simply loss of consciousness followed by brain death. It's so easy and peaceful that it's a process of choice for those choosing suicide at the end of life.
Wikipedia has a good article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inert_gas_asphyxiation [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday March 16 2018, @02:36AM
Man, that's a good one.
(Score: 5, Informative) by c0lo on Friday March 16 2018, @02:58AM
Nitrogen narcosis [wikipedia.org] and death by asphyxiation with nitrogen (or other inert gasses) [wikipedia.org] are two different things.
Nitrogen narcosis happens due to nitrogen under pressure dissolving in blood - see scuba diving - may not even result in death if there's enough oxygen - you'll just feel drunk because of the nitrogen under pressure.
Asphyxiation with inert gases happens at atmospheric pressures - thus, no nitrogen narcosis - and the effect are caused by the lack of oxygen. But you'll not experience a suffocation feeling, your respiration cycle won't even increase in frequency, you'll simply pass out.
One will feel suffocation only if the CO2 concentration in blood goes over a certain limit (in relation acidosis [wikipedia.org]). One will die in a atmosphere made of 80% oxygen and 20% CO2 not because of lack of oxygen, but because the body can't get rid of CO2.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by sjames on Friday March 16 2018, @03:13AM
No, a pure nitrogen environment will cause no discomfort. The person will pass right out and then die shortly after.
A CO2 environment would be excruciating, however.
Nitrogen narcosis is what happens to divers deeper than 30m or so and is a very different phenomenon. Also, one of the dangers of it is that the diver often doesn't realize he's impaired.
(Score: 4, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday March 16 2018, @04:06AM (1 child)
Erm... CO is not undetectable by the human body. It gives me one hell of a headache even in quite survivable concentrations. Try sleeping in a house that uses an old, poorly adjusted Dearborn heater for heating in the winter and you'll know exactly what I mean.
Likewise, nitrogen narcosis is not caused by lack of oxygen or excess of nitrogen. It's caused by breathing most any gas at higher pressure than your body can deal with.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Friday March 16 2018, @04:41PM
Quite so - I got similar results designing and testing alcohol camping stoves without enough ventilation. That's low exposure though - breathe freely in an oxygen-free atmosphere and you have only a matter of seconds before you lose consciousness - your lungs actually end up working in reverse as oxygen in your blood diffuses into the air in your lungs. You'd last a lot longer holding your breath, but then you'll feel feel like you're suffocating as the CO2 builds up. In a CO atmosphere you'd almost certainly pass out before developing more than a twinge of a headache.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Friday March 16 2018, @05:08AM
I'm against the death penalty, but I've heard that one of the dangers of N2 in the industrial context is that it does not create air-hunger (that feeling of suffocation) and so people tend to just pass out and die without really every knowing what hit them.
(Score: 3, Informative) by beckett on Friday March 16 2018, @05:25AM
nitrogen narcosis is caused by a high partial pressure of N2 affecting the nervous system. and the body doesn't "fight it": It is a physical property of the gas permeating the body's cells (the narcotic effects of high pressure N2 appear to be caused in-part by the lipid solubility of the gas) A diver begins to experience nitrogen narcosis at 2ATA or more (i.e. depths exceeding 10m/33fsw) and gets progressively more intense as ambient pressure increases.
However, executions happen relatively close to STP. if the victim is administered a normoxic mix at 1ATA, then the supply is swiched to 100% N2, narcosis would not occur as it would just be displacing a lungful of air at 1ATA with a lungful of N2 at 1ATA. a breath or two and the victim goes unconscious immediately.
Inert gas asphyxiation with nitrogen is a workplace fatality that occurs multiple times per year in USA, becuase going unconsious/dead is so a few breaths. In March 1981, a simulated launch of Space Shuttle Columbia killed two Rockwell technicians in an enclosed space flooded with nitrogen gas [nytimes.com]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday March 16 2018, @05:42AM (1 child)
IIRC Nitrogen narcosis is also known as "rapture of the deep", and fighter pilots with hypo-oxygenation used to space out without even knowing it. All you need to do is reduce the oxygen levels below about 10% (might need to test that, but 5% would certainly work) and the folks will totally space out. I'm not sure how low it has to get to kill them, however, but a sealed room with something to absorb the CO2 should suffice. You don't want to get the CO2 too low, or you get adverse reactions (I forget what, perhaps panic) and you don't want to let it build up, or you're just making them sick. (WWII submariners sometimes experienced that, and they hated it.)
Level of CO2 is used to control the rate of breathing, so it needs to be attended to, and pure Nitrogen would be a bad idea, unless it was so fast it killed them before their breathing went out of control. I think that low CO2 suppresses automatic breathing, which could lead to panic. Elevated CO2 causes rapid automatic breathing which would definitely be associated with panic. It's best to just keep the CO2 in the normal range and not rush things.
P.S.: Check out the fighter pilots. It might have been just caused by low air pressure, which would be easy to manage, just depressurize to lower stratosphere levels with supplementary Oxygen to mimic the breathing system that the pilots had. Until they fixed that problem they had lots of pilots pass out without knowing it. Most of the recovered without issue when the plane got into the lower atmosphere...but some didn't recover fast enough to land safely.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday March 16 2018, @05:00PM
Nitrogen narcosis and hyoxia have superficially similar effects, but very different causes. Oxygen deprivation does indeed cause your brain to stop working well, and quite rapidly, with little awareness that there's a problem. Nitrogen narcossis though is due to the intoxicating effects of basically any inert gasses, which become much greater under pressure - from what I can tell the mechanics of the phenomena are not well understood, but there's a correlation with the lipid-solubility of the gas in question. Basically, if you dive using pressurized ambient air, you have nitrogen narcosis. The only question is how badly it's effecting you, which can vary wildly between individuals and even from one dive to the next and, unlike alcohol, there's no possibility of building up a tolerance.
Pure nitrogen actually works very well for execution, as can be attested by pretty much anyone who has managed to survive an encounter with it. Basically, everything seems fine, and then you pass out. Your breathing will probably slow down as CO2 levels start building more slowly, but that won't happen until the oxygen in your blood is greatly depleted (and thus no more CO2 is being produced), at which point you'll be deep into hypoxia and no longer have the mental acuity to realize there's a problem. Plus, the effects happen VERY rapidly, as breathing an oxygen-free atmosphere will cause your lungs to operate in reverse, diffusing oxygen from your blood into the air, so you'll only remain conscious for a small fraction of the time that you would if you held your breath.
So, if you ever have to rescue someone from a nitrogen environment, hold your breath. Better yet, tape your mouth and nose closed so that you can't breathe no matter how painfully your lungs are screaming, it may buy you enough time to make it back out, and if you do pass out it will keep you alive considerably longer for the next person to try to save.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @05:53AM
Do you ever tire of getting simple facts wrong, --gweg_? Is it physically painful to be so stupid and uninformed, yet so compelled to spew your idiocy on the internet? Who makes you be yourself, and why do you allow them to violate that cruel and unusual thing?
-- OriginalOwner [soylentnews.org]