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Oklahoma is Poised to Become the First State to Use Nitrogen Gas in Executions

posted by mrpg on Friday March 16 2018, @02:02AM   
from the fundamental-states-of-matter dept.

DeathMonkey writes:

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

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Original Submission

• Re:It's about effin time Re:It's about effin time (Score: 5, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Friday March 16 2018, @07:52AM (3 children)

  by maxwell demon (1608) on Friday March 16 2018, @07:52AM (#653443) Journal

  Do you support prison sentences?

  Yes.

  If so, what is the acceptable number of innocent people kidnapped by the state?

  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.

  Do you support fines?

  Yes.

  If so, what is the acceptable number of innocent people robbed by the state?

  See above.

  Do you support corporal punishment?

  No.

  --
  The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.

  Parent

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• Re:It's about effin time Re:It's about effin time (Score: 4, Interesting) by julian on Friday March 16 2018, @03:58PM (1 child)

  by julian (6003) on Friday March 16 2018, @03:58PM (#653643)

  You answered exactly the way I would have. Why is this so hard for some people?

  Parent

  • Re:It's about effin time (Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday March 16 2018, @05:29PM

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday March 16 2018, @05:29PM (#653694) Journal

    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...

    Parent

• Re:It's about effin time (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @07:34PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 16 2018, @07:34PM (#653762)

  he can be freed and compensated.

  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.

  Parent