If Kenneth Eugene Smith is brought to the Alabama death chamber to face execution next week for his role in the 1988 murder-for-hire of a pastor’s wife, the state plans to use an untested and untried method to end his life, suffocating him with a stream of nitrogen gas to be delivered through a face mask.
In a federal appeals court Friday, Smith’s lawyers sought to block it, arguing that not only have Smith’s constitutional rights been violated, but that he could be subjected to an agonizing death and that most of the details surrounding the state’s new execution protocol “deserve more scrutiny.”
The use of nitrogen gas will be a capital punishment first, even though it has not only been denounced by some medical professionals but also by veterinarians who oppose its use on animals. In 2020, the American Veterinary Medical Association advised against the use of nitrogen gas as a way to euthanize most mammals, calling it “distressing.” One of the few uses of nitrogen gas in animal euthanasia is with chickens.
The United Nations’ Office of The High Commissioner for Human Rights has expressed alarm, saying in a statement that the untested method “could amount to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment under international human rights law.”
They aren’t doing it willingly. The drug manufacturers are no longer supplying the cocktails for lethal injections and the medical field is refusing to take part in the act.
Yes, so they chose an alternative that is meant to be as painless as the old method.
They chose a mechanical non- biological method that could proceed without the medical community, again this isn’t out of benevolence, they were forced to act less cruelly because their hands were forced by the medical community.
And the old method was often misadministered so it was often as painful as they could make it. Link I have no doubt someone will find a way to make suffocation painful. Even if the method on the books is painless. The cruelty is/ was/ and always has been the point.
You do love straw men.
No, if they wanted to be cruel, they could bring back hanging, the firing squad, or the electric chair. This is better than those.
You are making accusations with zero proof.
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/21/793177589/gasping-for-air-autopsies-reveal-troubling-effects-of-lethal-injection
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That doesn’t support your allegation that it was deliberately made painful. Hell, your own link says Ohio postponed executions to reevaluate. You are adding malice solely on the bases your your opinion.
It was deliberately made painful by the reports of the survivors. They took what was a deliberately painless set of injections and would administer massive overdoses of the killing portion of the cocktail without administering the sedative portion. I don’t want to remember how I know this. There were various reports of individual staff members overseeing the cases, included in how I’ve come to this conclusion.
What survivors? The article is about finding from autopsies.
And even then, they have no knowledge of anyone’s motives.
A few people have survived their first administration of a lethal injection. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/28/lethal-injection-surviving-execution-attempt-alabama
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