"For example:
The subject (Michael Portillo) sums up the experience “I had no idea I was near death”"
This clip is from a Horizon documentary of capital punishment. From an objective perspective, nitrous aka laughing gas is a cheap, painless, humane form of capital punishment----as basically you’re too “high” to realize that you’re dying.
One Louisiana corrections official interviewed by Portillo (a conservative UK politician) for the program felt that execution by laughing gas was too humane.
The bolded part is not accurate. It is not a lack of oxygen binding to hemoglobin that causes a suffocating feeling, rather it is a build-up of carbon dioxide in the blood which any inert gas can displace in the lungs.
The sensation of suffocation is * caused * by the buildup of CO2 in the blood.
In several previous death penalty threads, there was a case mentioned where someone wanted to be sedated and sleep through his execution. The judge ruled it unconstitutional, you have to be awake and know what’s happening to you as they kill you.
If CO renders someone unconscious, then kills several minutes later, it might fall under the same ruling.
What…why?
Knock someone out with sedatives, then use a gas mask full of either CO or an inert gas. Helium and nitrogen can also suffocate someone without triggering the sympathetic nervous system.
If we did it with helium I think people wouldn’t take it seriously. Using heavy doses of a sedative combined with a nitrogen mask sounds the most humane.
Not traumatic enough I suppose.
Jonathan Miller subject himself to hypoxia The Body In Question, Part 4 - YouTube
I think I’m the one who mentioned that case. Does anyone else remember it? IIRC it happened sometime in the mid-1980’s (?) but I could be entirely wrong about that.
I’m trying to google up a cite for that, but all I’m getting is page after page of cites about the recent Arizona case with a few other about other lethal-injection cases or discussions in general. The case I think I recall was long before lethal injection became popular, when people were still arguing about electric chairs and gas chambers and firing squads. In those days, there were gruesome stories about executions by those methods too.
ETA: So, by what bizarre tortured logic could the SCOTUS have come up with a ruling like that anyway? Any guesses? Here’s mine: What I think they were really saying is:
We, the SCOTUS majority, are right-wing conservative law’n’order Republicans and we believe that the State can execute anyone any way they damned well please but we understand we need to come with some better-sounding justification than that, so here it is.
I keep reading articles and op-eds (sorry, no cites off-hand, but I’ve seen plenty over the years) arguing to the effect that it’s difficult to kill people at least difficult to do in some well-controlled humane manner.
WTF?
Go to any hospital for any operation involving general anesthetic and they seem to have it figured out how to sedate people. It usually involves sticking a needle into a vein, usually in the forearm. They don’t need to stick a whole bunch of needles into you until you look like a voodoo doll or a porcupine.
Seems it would be easy to kill someone, just about any old way, humanely, once the person is thus sedated, no? Just lop off his head. Or dump the body into a vat of boiling acid. Whatever.
One aspect of “humane” capital punishment is the optics of it. It has to look calm and peaceful, even after the subject is fast asleep. You can’t sedate the subject and then douse with gasoline and set afire. You can’t sedate the subject and then toss the same into a wood chipper. There are witnesses to executions, usually, so there’s a lot of “execution theater” involved.
And, no doubt, there are all those who think executions really should be gruesome, but they know they can’t quite come right out and say that.
Another problem, periodically mentioned in conjunction with botched executions: It requires someone with a bit of skill at administering these injections to do it right. They really need a doctor, or at least a skilled nurse, to do it. But doctors generally refuse to be involved in executions. I’m guessing that real nurses would decline too.
In the cases I see, they apparently get some jail-house technician to do it, who isn’t really well-trained in the art. One reads stories of the needle missing the vein, or poking all the way through the vein and out the other side, so the juice just collects in the nearby tissue with little of it finding its way to where it belongs. ETA: Or bad dosages.
It’s just possible that lethal injections, as they are currently done (assuming a really effective choice of drug(s)), are just fine – if only one can be sure that the technician doing the job knows what he’s doing – apparently not at all a “given”.
You mentioned it in this thread, but I had already heard of the case.
CO is toxic by any reasonable definition of “toxic.”
Not at all. Military pilots go through high-altitude chamber training, in which they are placed in a room where the air is evacuated relatively rapidly to a pressure level that simulates 25,000 feet. After removing their masks, hypoxia begins to set in fairly soon. The trainees are required to execute various mentally demanding tasks, and eventually they get to the point where they are acting really stupid. The goal is to get them to actually experience hypoxia so that they understand what to watch out for, and it’s done because the symptoms are so insidious; you just get more and more stupid, and if you’ve never experienced it before, you won’t realize what’s happening to you. If it goes far enough, you get dizzy and pass out, at which point you’re well and truly fucked; there’s no panic phase. In the video, observe the second guy from the right; the masks are off at 1:00, and by 3:10 he’s useless, and by 3:20 he’s passed out without even realizing that he needed to put his mask back on.
Likewise with inert gas asphyxiation. Take 2-3 big drags in a row from a helium balloon, and you’ll get dizzy and pass out without ever suffering/panicking at all. If you’re wearing a mask that forces you to keep breathing pure helium, you’ll die - again, no panic at all.
For extended exposure to low concentrations (a fraction of a percent), yes. The Wikipedia page for CO poisoning suggests that at concentrations a little above 1%, you’re unconscious after just 2-3 breaths, and dead after just a few minutes.
The argument I’ve heard is this:[ol]
[li]The execution must be done by the government.[/li][li]Suicides don’t count as executions.[/li][li]The execution must be done totally by the government.[/li][li]Convict-assisted execution is a form of suicide and doesn’t count as execution.[/li][li]When the convict breathes the CO or CO2 or nitrogen or whatever, his participation disqualifies it as suicide or sort-of-suicide.[/li][li]This applies even when a gas mask is forcefully placed on the convict’s head; the convict is still doing the breathing.[/li][li]This applies even if the convict holds his breath as long as possible and then breathes involuntarily; it’s still him doing the breathing.[/li][/ol]
This seems not to be true, given that the gas chamber is still an option in some states:
The condemned person is even explicitly asked to assist in the process:
Keeve, is this some sort of new argument? The States have used Gas Chambers for decades to execute prisoners, without any sort of “he’s breathing!” argument to dissuade its use.
Anyways, with lethal injection the convict is pumping his own blood around, carrying the poison to his organs, is that not a problem?
So are there any differences between inert gas asphyxiation (let’s say nitrogen, since it’s the main component of air anyway) and CO poisoning?
My remaining argument in favor of CO is that because it so stealthily replaces O2 in respiration, it bypasses even some asphyxiation response.
I think an inert gas like nitrogen is the way to go, rather than CO.
The most significant difference to my mind is that CO is actively poisionous, and nitrogen isn’t - what kills is the lack of oxygen, which the body can’t detect. That makes the whole process safer for everyone (except, of course, the guy being executed). Catch a wiff of CO and you are in danger; catch a wiff of nitrogen, you won’t even notice.
I have read many accounts of people being subjected to pure nitrogen atmospheres, it seems they are dead before they even realize anything is wrong. So it is very humane, as far as executions go.
Wow. I am busted, but totally, and respectfully withdraw my comment. I coulda sworn that this question came up a few months back, and that this was the answer by consensus. Never thought about gas chambers.
Ignorance fought! and stupidly forgetful memories, too…
I think you might be conflating CO and CO2. CO is odourless and although there are symptoms (tiredness, headaches) associated with breathing it, it doesn’t typically produce a ‘danger’ response (that’s why it’s a killer).