Kenneth Smith, 58, is facing execution by an untested method that has never before been used in capital punishment in the US. It’s a technique that has been rejected on ethical grounds by veterinarians for the euthanasia of most animals other than pigs: death by nitrogen gas.
This is similar to the forced feeding situation when there were hunger strikes at Guantanamo Bay. A clip was circulating around of a young boy happily demonstrating inserting his own feeding tube and a lot of people were using the clip to demonstrate that inserting a feeding tube wasn’t that bad. The use of force on an unwilling participant is the difference. It is very different being held down while a tube is shoved into your head unwillingly than it is to calmly set yourself up for something you need to do.
The context of choosing to die in this method is very different than being forced into it. The man himself said he will be struggling. He will die panicked and afraid. I’m sure this method is perfectly fine when someone chooses euthanasia. I can’t assume someone who is being forced into it is going to have a peaceful or painless death.
There is no execution method in the world that will be given to a willing participant, almost by definition. The specific point and debate in this thread isn’t about whether or not execution is right. Most people on this forum certainly are at least skeptical of capital punishment. I certainly am against it.
The debate instead is, “given that capital punishment will occur because Southern states are the way they are, which we can agree is horrible in and of itself, what is the least bad way to do it?” The discussion around which execution is least bad is valuable from the standpoint of harm reduction. Currently, choices are what exactly? A multistage cocktail of euthanasia drugs that paralyze the executee before stopping their heart? The electric chair? Firing squad? Hanging? Beheading? Everything you pointed out and more are applicable to these methods as well.
You might argue that this makes any execution method unethical, and you’re right! Congratulations. You agree with pretty much everyone in this thread.
My argument was not to demonstrate that any given execution method might be bad, but the context in which something occurs fundamentally changes the nature of it. Because this method of execution is used in other ways in completely different contexts it does not necessarily mean it would be less painful or traumatic than other methods.
The nitrogen chamber appears to be less violent than a firing squad, but it is not certain whether this is the case. The purpose of banning certain execution methods and allowing others is not that one is cruel and unusual and the other is less so, it is to obfuscate the brutality of what executing a person is. If firing squad was the only allowable form of execution more people would oppose it due to the very clear presentation of what it is regardless of that method potentially being far less distressing and painful than the use of a small gas chamber.
Ah! Thanks for clearing that up. I understand your point. I’m not certain I agree though. As I wrote to another user downthread:
Using the stark, open, and obvious violence of a firing squad might make execution less palatable to the masses, but honestly, when are “the masses” actually exposed to footage of a criminal execution in the United States? We don’t normally film executions, and even when we do, we certainly do not broadcast them. Despite being one of the most carceral nations, typically unless a person has actually personally experienced prison, he or she largely has no idea what even goes on at that level, let alone death row.
It is true that executions by the state are not typically viewed by average people but the average person has probably been exposed to the way we execute people in one form or another. It could be through a re-enactment, a dramatization, a recounting, archived footage from a documentary, or some other such method. The idea that lethal injection is a humane method of punishment is much easier to sell than depicting a row of rifleman shooting someone full of holes. For example, until France abolished their death penalty their method of execution was guillotine within the walls of the prison. The idea of the state beheading people was too much for the sensibilities of France in the 70s even if they didn’t have to watch it happen. Beheading in this manner may also ultimately cause less panic and pain to an unwilling participant than a nitrogen chamber might but the idea of it is much more horrible.
My underlying point of course being that there isn’t really a humane way to kill someone or even a relatively humane way aside from deliberate torture. The idea that there might be I think allows the practice to continue by making it easier to tolerate even though it probably shouldn’t be. This is aside from the larger problems of it being completely permanent and therefore with zero tolerance for error or bias at best and legitimizing the idea that a state may legally kill its own citizens under some circumstances at worst. The case in this article is far from clear with the judge overruling their jury to impose a death sentence when the jury didn’t believe it was merited in this case. A judge being this cavalier about peoples’ lives being the final say in the matter to me indicates that the death penalty is not being taken as seriously as it should.
I don’t give that. I don’t give it a bit. Especially if holes can be poked in every new method as these ghouls come up with it
There is no reason to acquiesce to an inevitability that it will occur just because shitstains keep trying to execute people. I remember it was decades wasn’t a single execution in The United States.
There isn’t one, and every single method should be objected to as it comes up.
I wasn’t aware you were living in a reality where executions aren’t currently happening several times a year.
Here in this timeline, even though there are still executions, thankfully they are on the downswing and hopefully on the way out for good. But at least over the short term, even though every execution deserves to be robustly challenged, activists cannot be expected to win every battle. We also need to plan for what happens if we lose.
States like South Carolina and Idaho have already begun pivoting back to the electric chair and firing squads, and while no anti-capital punishment activist is to blame for it, speaking personally it certainly would not sit right by me to know that I played a part in denying the use of an execution method like nitrogen hypoxia, and the inmate, on whose behalf I was fighting for, wound up dying via electrocution in severe, debilitating pain over the course of 2-15+ minutes instead.
Maybe ultimately convincing judges to ban nitrogen hypoxia is a good thing over the long run, even if it results in short term harm. But that is not a calculus I feel comfortable solving on behalf of others who will suffer while I remain insulated from the consequences of this decision.