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Having worked for over 20 plus years in the industrial gas and chemicals industry, I can assure you that “it” (execution using nitrogen displacement of air) would be safe, economical, and very effective. Regardless of what you have read above, it would not require enough pure nitrogen to place anyone (spectators, executioners, or anyone else) in any danger. Nitrogen is already 80% of the air we breathe, so any so called leakage would simply instantly become part of the atmosphere. The chamber necessary for a person to be executed could be relatively small. It would only need to cover their head. One standard sized cylinder of compressed nitrogen is all that would be necessary for an execution. Nitrogen could be introduced via an inlet valve run by a computer program. It would be set to push nitrogen through the inlet valve at around 20 psig. A pressure relief valve set at 15 psig would move the air/nitrogen in the small chamber out through a vent to the roof. All very simple and cheap. All kinds of bureaucrats and so called experts would try to overly complicate the process. An emergency room vital systems heart monitor would indicate physical death. The only things preventing the use of nitrogen as an asphyxiant for safe economical capital punishment are all political and ignorance related.
It may be simple, but is it humane? Is it like falling asleep with carbon monoxide or is it like asphyxiation from an abrupt lack of oxygen? My guess is that no new methods will be approved since many want capital punishment completely abolished and this would go against that.
There's probably too much in the way of research, debate, approval, laws, and hoops to jump through with a new approach. The states seem fine with the options already in use.
I have heard that they shoot the condemned in China and send the bill for the bullet to the family.
I think it is interesting how our ways of executing people have progressed along with science and public conscience.
We have gone from cutting off heads to hanging to firing squad to the electric chair to gases to lethal injection.
I think it is ridiculous how much compassion we extend to the convicted when they were judge jury and executioner of their victims.
It is disgusting to see how the Florida shooter is being treated by our courts when it was his choice to buy the gun and take it to school to murder as many innocent people as possible.
We have other murderers and terrorists that have stepped outside humanity to commit their heinous acts against us and in these cases where their crimes and guilt are beyond a shadow of a doubt they should be taken out back and executed. If they used a gun then shoot them, a knife then stab them and let them bleed out as their victims did.
I think we are too soft on murderers. Life in prison is too good for them and costly for the tax payers.
It may be simple, but is it humane? Is it like falling asleep with carbon monoxide or is it like asphyxiation from an abrupt lack of oxygen? My guess is that no new methods will be approved since many want capital punishment completely abolished and this would go against that.
For humans it’s about as humane as you can get. There are deaths every year from inert gas asphyxiation, nitrogen probably being the most common. The reason people die is because there is absolutely no warning. The sense of suffocating is driven from accumulation of CO2 in the bloodstream. If you can successfully exhale your CO2, its concentration in your blood won’t increase. However, you cannot sense lack of oxygen. Literally within a couple breaths you can pass out.
Nitrogen is cheap, abundantly available (about 70% of the atmospheric air we breath), requires no special handling other than adequate ventilation for those you wish to keep alive.
This is from the Wikipedia entry.
“According to the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, in humans, "breathing an oxygen deficient atmosphere can have serious and immediate effects, including unconsciousness after only one or two breaths. The exposed person has no warning and cannot sense that the oxygen level is too low." In the US, at least 80 people died due to accidental nitrogen asphyxiation between 1992 and 2002.[3] Hazards with inert gases and the risks of asphyxiation are well established.[4]”
The problem is that the convicts would fight against breathing, as they did with cyanide. That period of struggle is considered inhumane.
They would never be aware of it even happening. I saw a demonstration where a guy was told to start printing the alphabet and to stop and push a button as soon as he noticed something wrong. They removed oxygen and co2 from the air he was inhaling while he was printing. He quickly started making big sloppy letters, running down the edge of the page and then just falling over, never realizing he was doing anything wrong. You start losing consciousness very quickly and you need to be conscious to make decisions about what you’re going to do.
And to answer the OP’s question, I think it’s because we have mostly lawyers as legislators who know law but know f**k all about most anything else. It’s not important to them and the great majority understand nothing of it and would rather try to figure out how to get 2 minutes in front of a camera than to think about it for 30 seconds.
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Originally Posted by reneeh63
It may be simple, but is it humane? Is it like falling asleep with carbon monoxide or is it like asphyxiation from an abrupt lack of oxygen? My guess is that no new methods will be approved since many want capital punishment completely abolished and this would go against that.
I think carbon monoxide would be more humane, seems like nitrogen would be like putting a plastic bag over your head.
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