# Alabama retries failed execution with untried method (nitrogen)
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alabama-retries-failed-execution-with-untried-method-nitrogen/996572
**Category:** The BBQ Pit
**Created:** [January 24, 2024, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alabama-retries-failed-execution-with-untried-method-nitrogen/996572 "2024-01-24T01:40:59Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 10
### Author:  [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)
#### Post date: [January 26, 2024, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alabama-retries-failed-execution-with-untried-method-nitrogen/996572/181 "2024-01-26T04:49:34Z")
[An incident of someone dying during weight loss cryotherapy in a high concentration of nitrogen.](https://apnews.com/general-news-4b2b9b54c046443694b83bb002e39164)
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### Author:  [@GrunthosTheFlatulent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrunthosTheFlatulent)
#### Post date: [January 26, 2024, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alabama-retries-failed-execution-with-untried-method-nitrogen/996572/182 "2024-01-26T04:58:37Z")
Russia has had a moratorium on capital punishment since 1996.
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### Author:  [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)
#### Post date: [January 26, 2024, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alabama-retries-failed-execution-with-untried-method-nitrogen/996572/183 "2024-01-26T05:00:07Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#):
>
> If punishment is the whole point, then why not let them sit in a cell and think about what they’ve done? If they’re executed, they cease to exist. Punishment over.
I’d rather spend the rest of my natural life in a cell than be dead.
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### Author:  [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)
#### Post date: [January 26, 2024, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alabama-retries-failed-execution-with-untried-method-nitrogen/996572/184 "2024-01-26T05:00:56Z")
> [@Smapti](#):
>
> I’d rather spend the rest of my natural life in a cell than be dead.
I’d take the death penalty. Different strokes and all that.
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### Author:  [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)
#### Post date: [January 26, 2024, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alabama-retries-failed-execution-with-untried-method-nitrogen/996572/185 "2024-01-26T05:01:50Z")
Letting them fall out of windows seems to have taken up the slack.
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### Author:  [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)
#### Post date: [January 26, 2024, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alabama-retries-failed-execution-with-untried-method-nitrogen/996572/186 "2024-01-26T05:21:33Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#):
>
> He might have been holding his breath.
He did:
[https://thehill.com/homenews/4430668-alabama-inmate-becomes-first-us-executed-with-nitrogen-gas/](https://thehill.com/homenews/4430668-alabama-inmate-becomes-first-us-executed-with-nitrogen-gas/)
> Hamm said that Smith held his breath initially and that the movements were involuntary and were expected side effects of death by nitrogen gas based on their research. He also claimed he didn’t notice Smith remaining conscious.
>
> “Nothing was out of the ordinary of what we were expecting,” Hamm said in response to the claims.
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### Author:  [@nelliebly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nelliebly)
#### Post date: [January 26, 2024, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alabama-retries-failed-execution-with-untried-method-nitrogen/996572/187 "2024-01-26T05:45:21Z")
I wish people would stop saying this. Smith did not request this. His attorneys merely said it would be better than the botched attempt at executing him.
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### Author:  [@Spoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoons)
#### Post date: [January 26, 2024, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alabama-retries-failed-execution-with-untried-method-nitrogen/996572/188 "2024-01-26T05:47:25Z")
Although the Alabama protocol for execution by nitrogen isn’t fully known, I found this item in CNN to be of interest:
[https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/25/us/nitrogen-gas-execution/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/25/us/nitrogen-gas-execution/index.html)
> [@](#):
>
> Alabama officials planned to use a mask to administer the nitrogen to Smith. Smith likely would have been strapped down when this occurred, [anaesthologist Dr. Joel] Zivot said before the execution.
Note that Dr. Zivot had nothing to do with the execution. He was an expert consulted by CNN.
> [@](#):
>
> On Thursday night, the execution process started at 7:53 p.m. CT, and a physician pronounced Smith dead at 8:25 p.m. CT, Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Hamm said. Nitrogen flowed for about 15 minutes during that time, and “nothing … out of the ordinary” happened compared to “what we were expecting,” Hamm said.
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### Author:  [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)
#### Post date: [January 26, 2024, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alabama-retries-failed-execution-with-untried-method-nitrogen/996572/189 "2024-01-26T05:50:04Z")
Just the quoted portions suggest that article needed another round of edits. Like they took an article written before the execution about what would/might happen, and then (too quickly) adapted it to be reporting on what actually happened.
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### Author:  [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)
#### Post date: [January 26, 2024, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alabama-retries-failed-execution-with-untried-method-nitrogen/996572/190 "2024-01-26T06:15:40Z")
> [@nelliebly](#):
>
> I wish people would stop saying this. Smith did not request this. His attorneys merely said it would be better than the botched attempt at executing him.
I think this is semantics. He didn’t say, “I would like to be asphyxiated with Nitrogen please”. He said, “If you are going to execute me, I would prefer Nitrogen over lethal injection.”
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### Author:  [@Eric1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eric1)
#### Post date: [January 26, 2024, 6:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alabama-retries-failed-execution-with-untried-method-nitrogen/996572/191 "2024-01-26T06:21:44Z")
Yet another way to say there’s no way to do a humane execution. 15 minutes of inhaling nitrogen has to cause some nasty brain damage before you die. It sure makes me want to vote only for the opposers EVER.
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### Author:  [@StarvingButStrong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StarvingButStrong)
#### Post date: [January 26, 2024, 6:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alabama-retries-failed-execution-with-untried-method-nitrogen/996572/192 "2024-01-26T06:38:44Z")
It didn’t say he breathed the nitrogen for fifteen minutes, it said the nitrogen flowed for fifteen minutes. Apparently that was the planned duration, and only after that time had elapsed did the doctor examine the body and say he was dead. How soon he stopped breathing we don’t know.
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### Author:  [@Eric1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eric1)
#### Post date: [January 26, 2024, 7:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alabama-retries-failed-execution-with-untried-method-nitrogen/996572/193 "2024-01-26T07:01:48Z")
Yes that’s true what you wrote. Thank you for clarifying that.
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### Author:  [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)
#### Post date: [January 26, 2024, 7:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alabama-retries-failed-execution-with-untried-method-nitrogen/996572/194 "2024-01-26T07:26:13Z")
> [@Eric1](#):
>
> Yet another way to say there’s no way to do a humane execution.
Of course it’s not humane. That’s kind of the point. Some people don’t deserve humanity.
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### Author:  [@Eric1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eric1)
#### Post date: [January 26, 2024, 7:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alabama-retries-failed-execution-with-untried-method-nitrogen/996572/195 "2024-01-26T07:40:06Z")
It seems like they could take away the humanity without killing the person. If I were in prison only being separated from my friends and family would feel like death.
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### Author:  [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)
#### Post date: [January 26, 2024, 7:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alabama-retries-failed-execution-with-untried-method-nitrogen/996572/196 "2024-01-26T07:45:25Z")
What a coincidence.
That seems to be the same opinion _he_ held.
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### Author:  [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)
#### Post date: [January 26, 2024, 7:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alabama-retries-failed-execution-with-untried-method-nitrogen/996572/197 "2024-01-26T07:48:37Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#):
>
> > [@Slithy\_Tove](#):
> >
> > If torture is the whole point, as sanitary was we can make it as we wash our hands of complicity, how about the torture of admittedly truly horrible criminals stewing in their own juices with no hope of release, for years and years?
>
> If punishment is the whole point, then why not let them sit in a cell and think about what they’ve done? If they’re executed, they cease to exist. Punishment over.
Punishment is only justified if it can be shown to be a deterrent. In many cases of extreme criminality it absolutely is not, either for other potential offenders or in terms of rehabilitation for the offender in question. So in the most extreme cases the only way to protect society is by removing such an offender from it. The remaining question is how to do it.
One argument for the death penalty versus life with no possibility of parole is the cost to the taxpayer of the latter. From a moral standpoint this isn’t an argument that I buy for one second, but it’s one that is frequently heard. The problem is that if we stoop to officially sanctioned killings we demean ourselves as a society. Aside from the immediate moral issues, the demeaning of life can have cascading effects elsewhere. At the very least, if we don’t have the wisdom to restore life from death, we shouldn’t be entitled to presume the authority to go the other way. A bunch of documents with a lot of legal words written on them saying otherwise is just institutionalized barbarism.
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### Author:  [@kambuckta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kambuckta)
#### Post date: [January 26, 2024, 7:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alabama-retries-failed-execution-with-untried-method-nitrogen/996572/198 "2024-01-26T07:49:51Z")
I know this is not a ‘death penalty’ thread, but fuck that noise. It’s the Pit, and I can post whatever the fuck I want.
America is pretty much the last western nation to abolish the death penalty. The death penalty is obscene and it doesn’t work. It doesn’t deter others, and once someone is incarcerated, they are never going to get out to repeat their crimes.
This bloke who died today. He was ‘contract’ killer for the measly sum of $1000. Seriously? Some poor schmuck down on their luck looking to get a bit of a reprieve from their poverty for a few weeks? And then 35 years later, you kill him. Seriously?
Yeah he murdered someone. It happens. Lock them up for the term of their natural life. Don’t be the barbarians who employ the state to kill on your behalf. Fuck that.
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### Author:  [@Eric1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eric1)
#### Post date: [January 26, 2024, 8:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alabama-retries-failed-execution-with-untried-method-nitrogen/996572/199 "2024-01-26T08:06:09Z")
I like the ‘what a coincidence.’ I think about how I’m different from a murderer because I think for example that the man who abused my childhood friend probably has value to someone in his life. It’s crazy that I came to that over my life. A murderer wouldn’t bother to have such a thought ever.
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### Author:  [@Eric1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eric1)
#### Post date: [January 26, 2024, 8:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alabama-retries-failed-execution-with-untried-method-nitrogen/996572/200 "2024-01-26T08:15:18Z")
I liked how you mentioned a sicial wisdom to make life from death. I could spend more’n a lifetime figuring out how.
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