this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2024
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Move follows Alabama’s recent killing of death row inmate Kenneth Smith using previously untested method

Three of the largest manufacturers of medical-grade nitrogen gas in the US have barred their products from being used in executions, following Alabama’s recent killing of the death row inmate Kenneth Smith using a previously untested method known as nitrogen hypoxia.

The three companies have confirmed to the Guardian that they have put in place mechanisms that will prevent their nitrogen cylinders falling into the hands of departments of correction in death penalty states. The move by the trio marks the first signs of corporate action to stop medical nitrogen, which is designed to preserve life, being used for the exact opposite – killing people.

The green shoots of a corporate blockade for nitrogen echoes the almost total boycott that is now in place for medical drugs used in lethal injections. That boycott has made it so difficult for death penalty states to procure drugs such as pentobarbital and midazolam that a growing number are turning to nitrogen as an alternative killing technique.

Now, nitrogen producers are engaging in their own efforts to prevent the abuse of their products. The march has been led by Airgas, which is owned by the French multinational Air Liquide.

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[–] NobodyElse@sh.itjust.works 110 points 8 months ago (6 children)

Nitrogen hypoxia sounds like one of the best ways to die, without pain or panic, but I completely understand why no company wants to be the supplier of the means of executing people. Small volume, small profits, extreme controversy. What’s to want there?

[–] Maggoty@lemmy.world 34 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Sure. If it was done correctly and we could trust the justice system to not kill innocent people. However they figured out the cruelest way to do it and SCOTUS ruled we have to kill innocent people even if all the evidence says they're innocent because it might hurt the court's reputation of they back down.

[–] Blumpkinhead@lemmy.world 9 points 8 months ago (4 children)

SCOTUS ruled we have to kill innocent people even if all the evidence says they're innocent because it might hurt the court's reputation of they back down.

I'm not familiar with this. Is this something that actually happened?

[–] lemon_space@thelemmy.club 17 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I believe they're referencing this:

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that state prisoners have no constitutional right to present new evidence in federal court to support their claims that they were represented at trial and on appeal in state courts by unqualified or otherwise deficient lawyers. The vote was 6-to-3, along ideological lines.

. . .

On Monday Thomas wrote the majority decision hollowing out that 2012 ruling on behalf of the court's new six-justice conservative super majority.

He said that federal courts may not hear "new evidence" obtained after conviction to show how deficient the trial or appellate lawyer in state court was. To allow such evidence to be presented in federal court, he said, "encourages prisoners to sandbag state courts," depriving the states of "the finality that is essential to both the retributive and deterrent function of criminal law."

. . .

Writing for the three dissenters, Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the decision "perverse," and "illogical." The Sixth Amendment "guarantees criminal defendants the right to effective assistance of counsel at trial," she said. "Today, however, the court hamstrings the federal courts' authority to safeguard that right."

NPR Source

This is so from 2022.

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[–] joel_feila@lemmy.world 17 points 8 months ago

yes more then once. Most recently the supreme court ruled you can't bring new evidence to an areal. Why? because it would undermine the state right to be sure of their decision. Also note that the most successful way to win an appeal on a criminal case was to bring new evidence that showed your defense did not do their job or the prosecution withheld evidence that showed your innocence.

[–] Natanael@slrpnk.net 16 points 8 months ago

It's called "finality".

The idea that it's more Important that the process is followed and then stops at some point than that justice is achieved.

Same reason they barred introduction of new evidence when appealing from state court to federal, giving potentially corrupt state courts full power to block exculpatory evidence to deny someone justice because the federal courts must uphold the verdict if the evidence which was accepted indicates guilt under the state law. Same thing if the prosecutor knows of evidence of innocence and withholds or, or if the evidence only turns up after the trial. You get only one chance and then you're screwed.

[–] Maggoty@lemmy.world 7 points 8 months ago

Shinn V Ramirez, 2022.

They were arguing ineffective counsel post conviction because evidence wasn't submitted that could have shown Ramirez was innocent. Lower courts agreed, citing previous SCOTUS rulings. SCOTUS decided federal courts must be bound by the original evidence only.

Money Quote -

Two of those costs are particularly relevant here. First, a federal order to retry or release a state prisoner overrides the State’s sovereign power to enforce “societal norms through criminal law.” Calderon v. Thompson, 523 U. S. 538, 556.

Second, federal intervention imposes significant costs on state criminal justice systems. See, e.g., Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U. S. 72, 90. Pp. 6–8.

(Separated for clarity)

Personally I love how they say we need to respect a state's right to enforce social norms. With the death penalty. Because those are equivalent things. Betty doesn't like to mow her lawn. She likes to let her neighbor Lucy do it. Off to the chair for her! Okay jokes aside what they mean is their power to make laws, enforce laws, and have a court system.

And then it's too expensive? Really? I'm not going to be surprised when we end up with the purge only instead of being everywhere it's actually when the air raid siren goes off during yard time at the prison.

[–] Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 23 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Media witnesses said Smith appeared conscious for about ten minutes. He shook and writhed for about two minutes on the gurney, followed by about five minutes of heavy breathing.

https://www.npr.org/2024/01/25/1226936713/alabama-execution-kenneth-smith

[–] BakerBagel@midwest.social 81 points 8 months ago (6 children)

Because they did in the worst way possible. All Alabama had to do was flood a sealed room with nitrogen and the execution would have been fairly "unremarkable". Instead they forced a has mask on Smith that required his cooperation to function properly, didn't have a one-way valve to remove exhaled gas, causing CO2 to build up in the tiny mask.

A haircut is also a painless and quick procedure, but that doesn't mean your barber can't be incompetent and totally fuck up your scalp.

[–] homura1650@lemm.ee 38 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Especially if the American Barber Association has a rule that none of its members may participate in the haircut; and scissor manufacturers all refuse to sell to you. So you end up having it done by a random person who doesn't mind ignoring what every barber says, using a pair of rusty scissors the sherrif was able to find at a garage sale.

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 10 points 8 months ago

Maybe at that point you shouldn’t cut the damn hair

[–] afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago

That's the thing and something I bring up with other engineers all the time. The medical community decided to not help and the result is the government can't do it very well making it harder and harder to justify the practice. Engineers however continue to work on military tech.

We need to organize and blacklist those that help make weapons.

[–] agressivelyPassive@feddit.de 3 points 8 months ago (4 children)

Is there some reasoning behind that? As far as I know, there are at least some gas chambers in the US. And even if Alabama happens not to have one, it doesn't seem too complicated to build one.

[–] BakerBagel@midwest.social 17 points 8 months ago

Cruelty and human suffering is the foundation upon which Alabama was built. The barbarity of it is the point.

Give me a Cessna Caravan and I'll kill anyone you want with hypoxia 18 at a time. It's not that hard. Alabama fucked it up because school is illegal there.

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[–] GBU_28@lemm.ee 8 points 8 months ago

Yeah you need to be in a chamber where your exhaled co2 is so immediately diluted that you get no feedback from it. I believe the current attempts used normal medical masks

[–] AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world 16 points 8 months ago (1 children)

If "right to die" laws become more of a thing, this would be the most compassionate way of doing a home suicide kit. I wonder if the manufacturers would oppose that as well, or only executions.

Like you said, there's not much in it for them either way.

[–] ShepherdPie@midwest.social 4 points 8 months ago (2 children)

How is this more compassionate that loading someone up with an OD of morphine or something similar?

[–] AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world 7 points 8 months ago

For a home kit, there's a lot less potential for abuse. You don't need hard drugs, or any abused drugs, it's just nitrogen. The person doesn't have any feeling of suffocating, they just go to sleep. Similar to why carbon monoxide poisoning is so dangerous.

[–] pearsaltchocolatebar@discuss.online 5 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Because ODing can be a rough way to die. With nitrogen hypoxia you just go to sleep and never wake up.

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[–] NatakuNox@lemmy.world 12 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It sounds like a reasonable way to die when the individual doesn't know what's going on or is accepting/willing. As an execution method it's shit.

[–] DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world 26 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (16 children)

Well, disregarding the normal fear of death that would be there regardless of the method, I think the issue is the mask. It would be much better to just fill the room with N2. You can do this easilly enough by evaporating liquid N2. Of course, this would not be "medical grade" so people would complain just to complain.

[–] BreakDecks@lemmy.ml 14 points 8 months ago (43 children)

We could also just not kill people. Kinda seems to be at the root of this problem.

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[–] Gork@lemm.ee 5 points 8 months ago (6 children)

Yeah the mask and timing is what caused that one prisoner to be in so much suffering since he knew it was going to happen imminently so he held his breath.

If it were done gradually over a period of like 30 minutes, he likely wouldn't have noticed and just drifted into unconsciousness.

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