Why don't states use nitrogen chambers for the death penalty?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Here’s a gift article about the problems with the use of midazolam in lethal injections:

Lethal injections for the death penalty seem hopelessly broken. If OK loses this case, they will appeal and they may even win, but in reading the article, you see how they’ve botched a few executions, and how it’s getting harder and harder to find a good drug mix.

A nitrogen chamber would be much harder to screw up. If the mechanism breaks and the chamber doesn’t fill up with nitrogen, then the prisoner doesn’t die right then, but he also doesn’t writhe in pain and die of a heart attack an hour later (an actual thing that happened in OK).

Death penalty opponents have been successful in making it difficult to use lethal injection by convincing drug companies not to supply the most effective drugs, and convincing medical professionals not to participate. So, states must fall back on less effective drugs administered by non-professionals, and that has led to botched and painful executions.

No medical professionals or pharmaceutical companies would be involved in a nitrogen chamber. In fact, those kinds of chambers are already in use for industrial purposes.

So the question is, why don’t states move to a nitrogen chamber?

Is it because of the cost? Seems unlikely – states spend tons of money just for the privilege of executing a prisoner

Is it because of the bad optics with gas chambers?

Is it because maybe it hasn’t been constitutionally tested as a valid form of execution?

Or, is it something else that I’ve missed?

Anyway, I’m interested in any thoughts and opinions on this.

2

Execution by plastic explosive.
Dig a deep trench.
Put a crude wooden chair made of railroad ties at the bottom.
Wrap a 5 pound mass of C4 around a football helmet, in 5 separately fused & wired sections. Hook it all to 5 different power sources, each capable of detonating all 5 blocks.

One switch.

Multiply redundant charges, with separate power sources, make failure unlikely.

Instant, utterly painless, & completely certain.

Then, fill in the trench.

3

Death it’s self wouldn’t suffice. Knuckledraggers would be disappointed if there wasn’t a modicum if discomfiture
for the condemned.

4

Have you been following Alabama? They’re trying to get nitrogen hypoxia up and running. It’s usually described as “untested on humans”.

~Max

5

OK, thanks both of you. I’m hoping to keep this focused on why they don’t use a safe (for the bystanders), effective, and painless method, rather than the messy, error-prone method they use today.

Among the problems with blowing the patient up are safety in handling the explosives, safety of the observers, and general gruesomeness.

ETA: Thanks, @Max_S! I have not. Do you know what the issues have been?

6

Originally Oklahoma was going to try it, after having a series of botched lethal injections (John Grant, Clayton Lockett). IIRC they couldn’t get the necessary equipment because none of the vendors wanted to be a part of it. So last I read Oklahoma was going to try and build the equipment themselves, then COVID hit and I haven’t kept up.

More recently Alabama ran in to the same problems, I believe they are trying to build the equipment as well.

~Max

7

Reading one article, it looks like they’re getting ready to go. Two issues that have cropped up:

  1. It hasn’t really be tested on humans, and people complain that it’s essentially human experimentation.
  2. It’s not clear how spiritual advisors could be present with the convict during the execution.
8

Well, it’s not a well established method of execution so one problem is that you don’t have guidelines. That means you will have complaints not only from the abolitionist lobby, but also concerns from the people who are in favor of capital punishment who want to avoid mishaps.

Add in the apparent issue that these states can’t get the materials and have to jury-rig their own execution chambers, and you can understand why only a couple are even trying.

~Max

9

The ironic thing is that we’ve “successfully” (read: accidentally) killed people with nitrogen gas. I don’t really understand what experimental about what happens when you deprive someone of oxygen.

I would have thought it would be a piece of cake to get a sealed chamber and whatever it takes to deliver pure nitrogen, but I guess I’m wrong.

10

Why would it be different than with a traditional gas chamber with cyanide gas?

11

I don’t know. Maybe we didn’t allow spiritual advisors to be there with inmates back in those days?

12

I seem to remember reading that a problem with execution by poison gas was that it was difficult to get a sealed chamber that didn’t expose the guards and observers to the poison.

13

Nitrogen isn’t a poisonous gas. I could see that being an issue with cyanide, but as long as the observer’s chamber was well ventilated, nitrogen should be fine, right?

14

Probably?

15

You need a reliable method of execution. Otherwise, you can end up in a situation where a person survives, but is brain-dead, or very badly injured, and then things get sticky, legally-speaking. It can potentially cause the same problem that you’re seeking to solve.

When you say…

…that is speculation. It would need to be tested to ensure that there isn’t some unforeseen circumstance that makes it easier to screw up than one would assume. You really just don’t know without testing it.

16

Yes, that makes sense. I guess it could be tested on farm animals that are due for execution anyway, or something.

17

Maybe it also tenderizes or flavors the meat? You have a multi-billion dollar idea there. :wink:

18

As you know, you’re breathing approximately 73% nitrogen as you sit reading this thread. We absorb it and then pee it out. Open a bag of chips too closely and you inhale it, but likely won’t keel over.

Workers die of it every year. We had one fellow survive because he fell clear of the flooded area, but he felt no distress and at first wondered if he had some kind of brain disorder.

Here’s a 12-minute video of its industrial hazard, covering the general lethality.

19

Maybe if they’re blocked by Big Nitrogen, they could find some coal gas. It was a big hit among the head-in-the-oven crowd in olde England.

20

I actually wondered about it as a mean’s of execution when I read the link in post 11 of this thread: