751
Kenneth Smith ‘struggled for life’ for 22 minutes in Alabama nitrogen gas execution: Updates
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2024
751 points (93.4% liked)
News
23669 readers
4675 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
A lot of people are focused on this quote:
Which says to me that from the time they brought him in and strapped him down until he died lasted about 22 minutes and the murderer struggled physically against the restraints the entire time.
This quote farther down suggests from the time they started administering the gas until he died only took a couple of minutes:
Several could be 25, and he could have been shaking from pain and agony, but it seems more likely he was holding his breath and shaking out of fear while trying to fight and get free.
Keep in mind that the first quote is from his anti-death penalty spiritual advisor and this entire article is brought to us by a magazine with an "end the death penalty campaign".
I'm generally anti-death penalty myself, but nitrogen asphyxiation seems way better than electrocution, lethal injection, or hanging. They could probably do it better by using some kind of general anesthesia to render him unconscious and then flood the room with pure nitrogen, or even just get rid if the death penalty all together. Unfortunately this is the world we live in and so fae this is the least bad option we've seen.
How dare you actually read the story!?
I do have some reservations about the idea of a compassionate execution method. It's kinda like tasers. Yes, they are a huge improvement on the alternative, but that also means they get used a lot more frequently.
The death penalty is barbaric.