“Kenny just began to gasp for air repeatedly and the execution took about 25 minutes total.”
Pretty compassionate way to kill a person.
Once again, the Law in the south is brutal.
I’m curious how they implemented this. The air completely has to be replaced with nitrogen, no breathing in a mix of nitrogen and outside air, no oxygen at all. People that enter confined spaces with no oxygen pretty much just drop and are dead quickly, so this doesn’t sound like they did it right.
They used a mask rather than the more appropriate method which would be to use a sealed chamber that was forcefully evacuated of oxygen and replaced by nitrogen the way the suicide pods are supposed to function.
The problem with a mask is it can’t be a perfectly sealed system. The issue with the execution from a logistical standpoint was the redneck engineering they employed and not the actual science behind nitrogen hypoxia.
Please don’t come at me, I’m not making a value judgment about the use of the death penalty, I’m just explaining the issue with their shoddy ass methodology.
Edit: accidentally a word.
Edit #2 (YouTube Link): Here is some additional information about why a gas mask is an ineffective and dangerous way to conduct an execution via nitrogen hypoxia from Dr. Philip Nitschke, a leading advocate of the right to die movement and an expert in the field of voluntary euthanasia. He personally examined the execution method being used in Alabama, and told them he felt it would be ineffective for many of the same reasons stated above.
FTR I’m generally against the death penalty, so same, don’t give me grief. I’m of the opinion that if it’s gonna be done, don’t fuck it up.
Ok. So regarding the implementation it sounds like they fucked it up. As you said (and I previously implied) it sounds like they didn’t properly exclude oxygen/remove waste CO2. Kinda hard to believe they fucked up something so simple considering the ton of evidence on hypoxic accidents.
Precisely. They apparently either felt it was fine to cut corners, do not fully understand how nitrogen hypoxia actually works, or a little bit of suffering was intentionally part of the process because it still is Alabama after all…
The big, really big issue, and I hate to say it. Is that, depending on the jurisdiction and laws in place, executions cannot be done by professionals. Most of the people who would know how to do it properly, medics, nurses, engineers, are ethically banned from participating or facilitating executions. Not that this stops them all from participating, and in some contexts some do, but on the general, executions on the USA are performed by completely incompetent individuals.
The more reason to just not fucking do them in the first place. How did they botched it using a mask when almost every single expert on medically assisted death recommends at least a sealed hood.
The people with the most experience with nitrogen suffocation are scientists working with animals. It’s the current best ethical euthanasia method.
They often don’t. There are moderate risks with lethal injections, and even if you seem unconscious, it’s still disputed whether you would really be unaware or not. As for the gas, suffocate in any manner is very painful and unpleasant.
Your suffocation reflex is driven by a buildup of carbon dioxide, not a lack of oxygen.
If you leave air composition the same but remove the oxygen, your body doesn’t notice and you feel fine until you suddenly black out.
https://youtu.be/UN3W4d-5RPo?si=3LKw5fe1wXfRDcrB
The Air Force does training on it, since it can happen if the aircraft loses pressure and pilots need to know how to notice and handle it. As you can see in the above video, the pilot is not suffering even though the oxygen level has been cut quite drastically.
If you hold your breath you still build up CO2. You know, as a reaction to being killed.
And after a couple minutes at most you will reflexively take a breath or pass out and start breathing. In an inert atmosphere that first breath will knock you out almost immediately. After that you won’t feel anything. After the individual is unconsious you just need to keep them in an inert gas for a few more minutes for them to actually die.
“Kenny just began to gasp for air repeatedly and the execution took about 25 minutes total.”
Even with a portion of that being ‘just to make sure’ his vital signs had stopped, it was certainly longer than a couple of minutes.
Because clearly they fucked something up. He was still getting oxygen somehow. I’m guessing they didn’t have the nitrogen flow high enough so he was still getting some oxygen.
It could have also just been agonal gasping which can last over an hour even after the person is already dead. It’s fairly common for people to see that and say the person is still breathing even though that person has already been dead for a while. It also happens with heart attacks and it frequently leads to ems having to explain to family members why there is no hope of resuscitation even though to them it looks like the person is still “breathing”.
Complain that execution is wrong, not that the method was unpleasant.
Wouldn’t a firing squad machine be so much faster and more effective? Have 3 people push buttons only one button works. It’s all a horrible mess, regardless of the method.
personally i think we should start doing a slightly modified version of the traditional british canon execution.
For those who aren’t familar, you strap a dude to the front of a canon, with a dud charge (i don’t believe there is a projectile) and then set it off and run. Apparently it’s pretty “spectacular” I say we do the same thing but delete the head in the process. Or perhaps add a canon ball because why not.
If we’re executing people theres no need to pretend what we’re doing is “good”
Too expensive and dangerous. A 2-ton tungsten cube dropped on the head is quick, painless, cheap, and puts on a show that can be cleaned up with a power washer.
Tungsten is not cheap, also it might fracture
It costs about $1.25m to execute one person currently. 2 tons of tungsten costs $60k spot, $240k with government contract as a one-time purchase. If it were to become damaged, it can be recycled into a new state sanctioned penal murder cube. Given the price of tungsten will increase in value approximately 100% per decade, it is a viable government investment.
Elect me to be king of America. I will balance the budget and establish a stranger economy with a dollar backed by state sanctioned penal murder cubes and other innovative and cost-effective measures. We will all be equal in death and that is a promise you can count your votes on.
I don’t support capital punishment.
But hypoxia in humans is well studied. Unless they were using monumental stupid gas like CO2 (which triggers your breathing reflex) then the problem wasn’t the method, in principle.
I wouldn’t put it past a execution supporter to fuck it up somehow, though.
This was discussed in another thread. Apparently they did not scrub the CO2 he expelled (which presumably under high anxiety and adrenaline would be way higher) and he simply rebreathed that CO2 back in, mixed with the nitrogen.
For those unaware, CO2 buildup in our blood is what triggers our brainstem to go crazy and gasp for air and convulse and generally have that terrible sense of asphyxiation/drowning. Lack of oxygen does not.
Ah yes, state sanctioned… murder… great…
That is the purpose of states and of nations, to hold the monopoly on legitimate violence.
That is a really bad idea
Okay. What do you believe the purpose of states and nations is?
To represent the interests of the people on an inter and intra national level. Not to have a monopoly on violence. If only the cops/military have the ability to enact force both legally and practically, it will be abused. We can see that all over the United States and the world.
Representing the interests of people is the purpose of governments, not nations.
Has there ever been a nation without a government?
Perhaps not, but there are governments without nations. The EU or the UN, for instance.
When is America going to learn that you can’t punish murder with murder? You are literally saying “rules for thee but not for me.”
I once saw a slogan on a button at a street vendor in Washington D.C. “Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?” It’s stuck with me after two decades.
I don’t know that we do it to make any such statement to the guilty party. I personally think we do it to 1. deter others from going down that path for fear of the consequences, and 2. remove an individual from society who has shown themselves incapable (in the most malicious and extreme way) of properly functioning in society. They are a danger to society, therefore they need to be removed. Obviously you could make the argument that we could simply banish them somewhere or lock them up for the remainder of their lives, but in my personal opinion that’s not definitive enough. They could escape, be let out early, and harm someone else.
Or they could be innocent.
That’s entirely possible, no system is perfect, but rather than countering my statement with something that happens the least, perhaps you could offer up an idea on how to handle what happens the most. How do you think we should handle maliciously evil (for lack of a better word) people who commit heinous crimes?
Lock them up, as I said
I personally experienced breathing nitrogen until loss of consciousness under controlled and supervised conditions for training purposes with the RCAF. I was in a room with seven other people who were all doing the same thing as well as instructors who were in here with us for safety.
The point of the exercise was to sit in a room with a mask on, recognize the symptoms of hypoxia when we experienced them and throw a lever that would resume normal air breathing once we had enough. We were given tablets with simple games to play to simulate having our minds occupied on accomplishing some tasks. We knew they were going to switch or air supplies with pure nitrogen at some point to cause hypoxia but we didn’t know when it was going to happen. The room was also a hypobaric chamber but it didn’t stimulate a high enough altitude to induce hypoxia by itself, it was only there to simulate the environmental signs of decompression ( fogging of the air, percieved drop in pressure, cooling sensation, etc)
We sat there for a few minutes accomplishing the tasks on the tablets (basically paying candy crush) with nothing special going on. Then I noticed that we all started breathing deeper and harder. When I looked around people were also red in the face but strangely did not feel any discomfort from it and some people were even still playing on their tablets without noticing. Some of them threw their personal lever immediately because the point of the exercise was to recognize the signs of hypoxia. But others including my competitive ass wanted to see how far I could take it and if I could outlast others so we kept going.
My breathing naturally got deeper and harder but strangely I wasn’t feeling like I was suffocating. I started feeling pins and needles in my extremities. Concentrating on the tasks in the tablet became increasingly difficult and slower. A few moments later I got tunnel vision and my hearing started to sound muffled. These two effects progressively got worse until I could almost not see or hear anything anymore at which point I finally threw the lever just before passing out due to a phenomenon called oxygen paradox where when oxygen supply is resumed the hypoxia symptoms briefly get worse before going away. I didn’t even notice passing out. I woke up a few moments later and from my perspective it seemed that time had skipped forward a minute. Had I not thrown the lever and there were no instructors to do it for me I would have died a few moments later.
All of this took less than 5 minutes and I never experienced anything worse than mild discomfort throughout. I don’t know how they managed to make it last 25 minutes other than maybe the brain stem running on fumes and keeping the heart beating but there is no consciousness at that point. If I ever had to pick a way to be executed this would be it, provided that it is done correctly.
You did that in a safe situation where nobody was trying to kill you. I don’t suffer when holding my breath underwater, but the moment someone holds me down I am going to panic.
Try to hold your breath for as much as you can, and you will feel an very strong urge to breathe. This doesn’t happen with nitrogen.
Sure, the person is mad scared, but he’s not suffering because of the nitrogen.
“Waterboarding doesn’t cause suffering because it isn’t literally drowning.”
That’s what you sound like.
The body is weird when it comes to breathing. It doesn’t measure one of the critical gasses. 3 things particularly send the body into a breathing panic.
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Rising CO2 (via blood acidity)
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Water in the airways.
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Resistance to inflating the lungs.
Water boarding is particularly evil, since it creates just enough of the last 2 to trigger a full blown drowning reaction, but is light enough to not actually be dangerous. This lets the questioner hold the victim in that zone, without permanent physical harm (but massive psychological harm).
Nitrogen hypoxia doesn’t set off any of those triggers. This makes it particularly dangerous to some workers. They don’t realise anything is wrong until they pass out.
Also, to clarify. I am massively against the death penalty. It’s both cruel, and not particularly effective as a deterrent. It’s also no cheaper, in practice, than life imprisonment. However, if it is going to be used, it should be as humane as possible. Nitrogen hypoxia is about as humane as it can get.
They cannot do it humanely with a method that requires the person to breath normally to work. If they can hold their breath it will always be inhumane because they will still be struggling and have the same impending doom and physical reaction as waterboarding.
It does not matter if the chemical properties are different when the person has a working brain and doesn’t want to die. Or if it is being implemented by incompetent people who couldn’t even kill him with lethal injection in 2022.
So what method would you suggest, assuming you must choose a method?
I’m completely against the death penalty. It’s no longer an option over here in the UK. However, if it must be done, do it as humanely as possible.
Locked in a box, with a cat, a flask of poison, a radioactive source, and a Geiger counter.
Except when the Geiger counter gets a hit, it sets off a nuclear bomb inside the box so I’m instantly vaporized.
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As someone who gets nitrogen at the dentist office with a mask I have a theory that it was just him consciously fighting it. It’s positive pressure nitrogen that you just breath in at normal breath rate. If you breath really hard you can displace the nitrogen and suck in some regular air. It sounds like he fought it which caused it to take longer. It is the standard human reaction to fight against one’s own death and I’m guessing he thought that if they held out long enough they would stop. If they are going to use a mask like that as opposed to a hood or chamber they really should sedate the person first.
…this is hilarious. The dentist gives you nitrous oxide (laughing gas), not straight up nitrogen.
I wonder how long Elizabeth Sennett struggled to live after Kenneth stabbed her to death. May she and her family rest in peace knowing justice has been served.
Murder isn’t justice. We have shit carved into rock explaining to you rockheaded morons that violence only begets more violence.
I don’t know anything about this other than the guy most have been pretty terrible to be on death row but even a brutal killer should have some rights nobody deserves to die like that
Pray tell, what is your favourite method of execution?
His victim died far more painfully if that helps.
Justice isn’t revenge.
Justice is giving what’s owed. And that’s a great thing to argue about: What did he owe? To the family, the victim, and society. The question would be easy if taking his life restored the life of the woman he murdered. But that’s not possible. However I have seen arguments that would require his death so organs could be harvested to save the life of others who would otherwise die. I’m not comfortable with that but do think that debate needs to happen.
Are you fucking mad? You want to give the state an incentive to murder prisoners? What the fuck is wrong with you?
ALL COPS ARE BAD
I think we need to have the debate. If you murder someone, do you owe your life if it can save the life of another?
As a transplant recipient who is now listed for a second transplant.
Nobody wants the state to murder people to increase the supply of organs.
Stop couching your vengeance fantasies in altruism.
I think we need to have the debate.
Humans LONG before you had the debate already. Pick up a history book, please! You are not a unique snowflake with concepts this earth has never before thought about. Everything that rattles around in the paint-can on your neck has been debated for generations.
Sorry. I can’t emphasize with criminals. It’s impossible for me. The only thing that is weird to me is why on earth you took almost 40 years to execute a prisoner? It doesn’t make sense. And other thing. I hope all the 4 criminals get the same punishment as well. It looks like the idiot paid the most.
“Pastor Charles Sennett Sr. hired Billy Gray Williams, one of his tenants, to murder his wife, 45-year-old Elizabeth Dorlene Sennett.[6] To carry out the plan, Williams hired Kenneth Smith and John Forrest Parker to assist him.[6] Sennett was going to pay each of the men $1,000 for the murder.[6] On March 18, 1988, Elizabeth Sennett was found with fatal injuries in her home in Colbert County, Alabama.[6]”
Oh and other thing for all the softy snowflakes. Let’s hope your mom, sister, granny, father, brother, never get killed. It’s way too easy to talk from your comfortable positions.
Most sane people can’t empathize with (violent) criminals. But I can empathize with the wrongfully convicted. As distasteful as it is to let murderers and rapists drag out their drain on society, it’s infinitely preferable to executing an innocent person.
Removed by mod
Look I can’t help but feel deceived.
Every single time the death penalty was brought up, nitrogen asphyxiation was touted as a humane alternative. There were always claims that it would be painless, and that the process itself was extremely well understood. It was usually further implied that the reason states don’t do this was because death penalty advocates wanted the prisoner to suffer as long as possible.
Yet the second nitrogen asphyxiation became a viable option, the very same people touting it lined up against it. Suddenly it was completely unproven. Suddenly it was wholly inhumane and inflicted suffering.
It’s so incredibly obvious that the push for nitrogen asphyxiation was at least in part a bad faith argument by people who are philosophically opposed to the death penalty.
Being philosophically opposed to the death penalty is a valid opinion, but the dishonesty makes me much less inclined for me to take these people seriously.
I don’t think I’m unique in that regard. Nobody likes being deceived or lied to.
What if you’re right though? Isn’t then a perfectly good time to lie? If you know for sure that the death penalty is evil (which doesn’t seem too big a leap given the facts), then it’s wrong not to lie to people to get them to stop it. Otherwise you’d be saying that your own morality outweighs the humanity of others. If it results in no death penalty, it was a good action. People act like the ends aren’t justifying the means in 99.99% of cases. It is notable specifically when the ends do not justify the means. If the ends are preventing murder, and the means is lying, there is no question whether lying is justified.
If a person lies to me I’m not going to believe them next time they attempt to engage with me.
Seems like a pretty small price to pay to prevent murder. In fact, I’d go so far as to say you’re a bad person if you’re not willing to pay that price.
I’m not a bad person for not wanting to be lied to.
True, but they’re not a bad person for lying to you.
Pro Life!
They tortured him to death.
