The implementation of the death penalty itself is vengeful and barbaric.
Accidents in enclosed spaces lacking oxygen provide plenty of prior art for killing a human without panic nor suffering. I believe certain drugs such as morphine in high enough doses would also induce death with minimal pain.
Yet the state-sponsored murderers still use barbaric methods. Even in states where the "gas chamber" is a thing, cyanide is used instead of inert gases such as nitrogen, despite the latter surely being cheaper, easier to procure and safer to handle for the murderers and the rest of prison staff.
He comes to the conclusion nitrogen would be the most humane (euphoria, then painless death). Apparantly it won't get used because those states that still use the death penalty find this way of leaving the temporary for the infinite a bit too easy on the convicted... (forward to 45:30 in the video).
There's increasing consensus that capital punishment methods, at least in the US, are not appropriate!
Given that we allow the state to execute people -- a dubious proposition in the first place -- i don't understand why we don't just push a shitton of phenobarb and xanax or whatever. "an anaesthetic overdose" is pretty darn humane if we're willing to accept the premise that anaesthetic "work" by "decoupling consciousness". Scare quotes intentional here, because we genuinely don't know how anaesthetic work but we broadly agree that when you've taken a lot of them you don't feel any pain.
Title is what the news story said, but it is not accurate and it's sensationalized.
They are not using poison gas (a la Zyklon B, which is the parallel I suspect they want you to draw). They are using nitrogen gas, effectively displacing oxygen and asphyxiating the patient. This is massively important because of how inhumane poisonous gases tend to be, and how humane death by inert gas is.
Your body calculated whether you are asphyxiating by measuring your bodies ability to expel CO2, not it's ability to intake oxygen. As long as you can expel CO2, your body thinks everything is fine, even if there is no oxygen to breathe. As such, sufferers tend to not even realize that they are dying.
I'm not a big proponent of the death penalty, but if we are going to enforce it, I see no reason to make it any more gruesome or unpleasant than it has to be. Then again, I strongly suspect that the suffering of the convict is a big part of the reason we do things the way we do. A 12 gauge buckshot shell to the back of the head seems far more humane than the electric chair, and has existed for longer (well, maybe not 12 gauges specifically, but shotguns in general). The only reason I can think that we keep inventing these overly complicated and yet still gruesome ways to kill people is to ensure that the convict suffers, while being just humane enough that people can palate it.
I don't support the death penalty, but your comment about a "must-cause-pain execution method" seems completely off-base based on everything I've read. If you've kept up with the news, the argument is actually that the procedure MUST NOT cause pain to the condemned, and that's actually very hard to do while still ensuring death. The prototypical "three drug protocol" starts with a deep sedative that is supposed to render the person insensate (feeling no pain), then a paralytic to stop them from convulsing (the paralytic alone would actually cause death by asphyxiation in most cases), followed by potassium chloride which induces cardiac arrest.
If you wanted to kill someone painfully, you could just skip straight to the potassium chloride. It would burn like hell and they would have a massive heart attack while fully conscious.
I agree that the methodology could probably be improved. If we're optimizing for psychological comfort for the prisoner and certainty of the process working, I'd actually recommend a close-range shot to the head with a high caliber bullet.
Depending on the distance and round, not only will the prisoner not experience their own death (they won't see or even hear it coming), it's astronomically unlikely to fail. High velocity rounds will pierce through the tissue more quickly than it can physically tear, and will technically exit the body before the brain matter has begun tearing. The physics of this is fascinating, because it not only ultimately destroys significant brain tissue; the process stretches out the tissue, straining and damaging the rest of the surviving brain tissue.
Of course, this is not optimized to be clean. It's gruesome, but I don't think it's necessarily cruel. One moment they're alive, the next they're not. Blunt force is still the quickest way to induce a cessation of consciousness. If the prisoner were not aware of it happening, they would probably be at greater peace at the time of their death. This could also be done remotely so as to reduce the mental toll on the executioner.
Unfortunately, it would make an open casket unlikely. But I imagine most prisoners due to be executed experience a lot of terror in the hours, days and weeks preceding their final moments under the current system. I imagine living with that anticipation is horrifying for some.
From what I can understand through cursory research, morphine is a painless way to die, so much so that doctors use it to ease patients into death when there is an acceptable lack of available treatment. Extreme euphoria followed by unconsciousness doesn't sound like a bad way to do.
I often wonder what is causing us to have such a hard time killing people without pain or distress or the perception of cruelty (as much as that's possible when killing a person). Why aren't prisoners put to sleep with gas and then killed as cheaply (and non-gruesomely) as possible thereafter?
It is meant to be a bit painful in all circumstances. It isn't a pleasant way to die, but it doesn't look all that bad to watch, which is why it is used. Pain and trauma free measures like nitrogen asphyxiation aren't used for that reason; pro-death penalty advocates want to keep it painful.
There's a fantastic documentary called 'How to kill a human being', with Michael Portillo (former UK politician), made back in 2008.
It covers this quite nicely - Includes an interview with a death penalty advocate and asks about a 'theoretical painless execution method' and the advocate agrees that if such thing were available it would be ideal.
Then later, after Portillo has done a bunch of investigation, hypoxia (I think) is landed on as an ideal solution. It's put to the advocate, who then squirms and insists that it's not a suitable 'punishment'.
My memory is hazy since I haven't seen it in a decade, but it's a fantastic doco and probably freely available now.
If the idea is to prevent pain, there are many simple methods. Heroin overdose? Carbon monoxide?
I'm theoretically OK with the death penalty for heinous crimes, but in practice I oppose it -- the chance of a false positive is way above zero with the current legal system.
I remember hearing somewhere that a reason this isn't done is because it doesn't provide closure to victims and their families–which is supposedly something that the death penalty is supposed to achieve. You just see them go to sleep and die.
By the way, I'd think that using something like Nitrogen is probably a better choice, being as it is inert and nontoxic, but just as good as an asphyxiant.
The gallows has too many variables. Too short a rope, and you spend a few minutes asphyxiating. Too long a rope, and your head pops off. If the executioner makes a mistake, it's not humane anymore. If the executioner doesn't like you, he might intentionally "make a mistake".
It's theoretically more humane, and harder to screw up, to OD you on happy drugs. (It also looks more peaceful when one of those drugs is a paralytic.)
Oklahoma a few months ago introduced nitrogen asphyxiation as their backup plan. We know it's painless because a few people have accidentally entered nitrogen-heavy areas and didn't notice anything was wrong until they dropped unconscious (and were recovered before dying).
I don't understand why any form of execution -- lethal injection, firing squad, guillotine, or any other -- isn't preceded by a hearty dose of morphine.
So what you're saying is, there is a reliable means of death that is, in all likelihood, more humane than any practiced by states with capital punishment?
Accidents in enclosed spaces lacking oxygen provide plenty of prior art for killing a human without panic nor suffering. I believe certain drugs such as morphine in high enough doses would also induce death with minimal pain.
Yet the state-sponsored murderers still use barbaric methods. Even in states where the "gas chamber" is a thing, cyanide is used instead of inert gases such as nitrogen, despite the latter surely being cheaper, easier to procure and safer to handle for the murderers and the rest of prison staff.
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