16 Comments
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Patricia Talbott's avatar

ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY!!

Pauline Barraza's avatar

It’s all so backwards and barbaric. Nothing more than state-sanctioned murder, and disproportionately done to Black men. Too many have been cleared through The Innocence Project. One wrongful execution = too many wrongful deaths.

Pauline Barraza's avatar

Punishment should be about justice and not VENGEANCE.

Paula R Strawser's avatar

I find it incomprehensible in this day and age that the death penalty is still legal. Given the legislative burden of appeals, given the inhumanity of executions, given the possibility of error, the death penalty should be off the table. We fallible humans, should not be empowered to take a life.

Emma's avatar

Plus we generally should find it unappealing to be in the company of the other countries who continue to behave as if it is the dark ages.

Karen Gold's avatar

So they’re going to use the firing squad instead? How humane of them /sarcasm

John Westhora's avatar

Squad is actually far more humane, if we're speaking of suffering.

One well placed shot it's over. Nitrogen hypoxia is obectively torture until death.

That said, the death penalty needs abolished.

Karen Gold's avatar

It may be theoretically more humane in terms of suffering but it’s such a violent way to murder someone. And yes, the death penalty is state sponsored murder, no matter the method.

John Westhora's avatar

Not to mention that you ignored my last sentence.

Not much point talking to someone who acts as such.

John Westhora's avatar

Not theoretically. It's objectively more humane.

You're making an appeal to emotion. That's a Fallacy.

Emma's avatar

Breathe dude, and she didn't ignore your last sentence.

Richard Luthmann's avatar

The state should not be in the killing business. Period. Once government claims the power to execute, it inevitably starts sanitizing cruelty with bureaucratic language: protocol, hypoxia, feasibility, penological interest, alternative method. Strip away the jargon, and you have public employees debating how best to end a human life without making observers uncomfortable. If sadists want medieval punishment, at least admit it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsNz41_FrQI

Do not pretend suffocation gas, chemical cocktails, botched veins, and execution chambers are civilized because lawyers reviewed the paperwork. Execution feeds vengeance, state power, and the illusion that killing can be clean.

Karla Lian's avatar

So how difficult is it really for the State to kill someone? With the botched executions that have taken place they sure make it seem difficult. They need to take a lesson from the fentanyl overdoses. It’s pretty darn easy pretty— unless you’re looking to make suffering part of the punishment, in addition to the death.

Roger Lambert's avatar

This finding by the court, that nitrogen suffocation causes distress, is contrary to everything I have read on the topic, and as far as I can tell, is physiologically impossible. Oxygen deprivation is NOT the cause of the physiological sense of suffocation; rather it is the build up of CO2 in the blood. Breathing nitrogen gas also exchanges the CO2 out of the bloodstream - so there is no way a person would feel oxygen-deprived or be subject to pain or distress from a feeling of suffocation, unless somehow the procedure was done incorrectly.

Additionally, breathing concentrated nitrogen causes almost immediate unconsciousness without any warning at all. This is why working with liquid nitrogen, which is stored in laboratory cold rooms is so dangerous. I was a research lab technician for eight years. Whenever samples needed to be retrieved from nitrogen storage, the iron-clad rule was that the door to the cold room was to remain open. There are horror stories where the door was kept closed, and multiple technicians died, one after another, trying to help their fallen comrades, because there is no smell to nitrogen, absolutely zero sensation of suffocation, and almost instantaneous unconsciousness.

Estimates are that ~1000 people have used nitrogen gas inhalation successfully to commit suicide.

John Westhora's avatar

You've simply made an argument from authority.