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Thread: Authorized Methods of Execution

  1. #11
    Banned TheKindExecutioner's Avatar
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    I don't see why all states don't just switch to firing squad. It'It's the quickest and easiest and America has TONS of guns to do the job!

  2. #12
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Death by Nitrogen

    If lethal injection falls out of favor, death penalty states could turn to a new method: nitrogen gas.


    San Quentin Prison's disused gas chamber


    On Wednesday night, the Supreme Court stopped an execution by lethal injection. The condemned Missouri man, Russell Bucklew, says he has a medical condition, affecting his veins, that would make the injection cause hemorrhaging—and make him feel like he’s choking on his own blood. The court took the unusual step of intervening at the last minutes, when every other court had turned Bucklew down, and also of sending the case back to the lower courts to decide whether to hold a hearing about Bucklew’s claim.

    The Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that Kentucky's three-drug protocol for carrying out lethal injections was constitutional, but there’s no question that the method looks grimly suspect in the wake of Clayton Lockett’s apparently painful, botched execution in Oklahoma last month. Not so long ago, though, this was the method that represented progress. Hanging. Firing squad. The guillotine. The electric chair. The gas chamber. Lethal injection. Every age seems to feature a new and improved method of capital punishment, billed as more efficient and humane. The spectacle of Lockett’s death, and the Supreme Court’s hesitation, shines a spotlight on the latest idea—death by nitrogen.

    This new proposed method, known as nitrogen asphyxiation, seals the condemned in an airtight chamber pumped full of nitrogen gas, causing death by a lack of oxygen. Nitrogen gas has yet to be put to the test as a method of capital punishment—no country currently uses it for state-sanctioned executions. But people do die accidentally of nitrogen asphyxiation, and usually never know what hit them. (It’s even possible that death by nitrogen gas is mildly euphoric.

    Deep-sea divers exposed to an excess of nitrogen develop a narcosis, colorfully known as “raptures of the deep,” similar to drunkenness or nitrous oxide inhalation.)

    You can oppose the death penalty and still see the merit in making executions more humane. As Boer Deng and Dahlia Lithwick argued in Slate, opponents of the death penalty inadvertently have made lethal injection less safe, by forcing prison officials into using inferior methods and substandard drug providers. As the states struggle to obtain drugs, such as pentobarbital, for lethal injections because of an export ban by the European Union, lethal injection has been turned from a method of execution into a medical experiment.

    Proponents say that death by nitrogen, by contrast, adheres to the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. The condemned prisoner would detect no abnormal sensation breathing the odorless, tasteless gas, and would not undergo the painful experience of suffocation, which is caused by a buildup of carbon dioxide in the bloodstream, not by lack of oxygen.

    In late April, Louisiana Department of Corrections Secretary James LeBlancsuggested to a state legislative committee that Louisiana should look into using nitrogen gas as a new method of execution, since lethal injection has become so contentious. “It’s become almost impossible to execute someone,” LeBlanc complained to the Louisiana House Administration of Criminal Justice Committee.

    “Nitrogen is the big thing,” LeBlanc told the committee. “It’s a painless way to go. But more time needs to be spent [studying] that.” The committee instructed LeBlanc to do some research on the subject and report back. In the meantime, Louisiana has delayed a pending execution. “I’m not taking anything off the table,” says state Rep. Joseph P. Lopinto III, chairman of the state’s Administration of Criminal Justice Committee. “If someone says nitrogen gas is the way to go, then we can debate that and do it if need be.”

    As long as 32 states have capital punishment on the books, there should be a less reliably cruel method of execution than lethal injection. “If we’re going to take a life, then we should do it in the most humane, civilized manner as is possible,” says Lawrence Gist II, an attorney and professor of business and law at Mount St. Mary's College. “Right now, nitrogen is the best of the available options.”

    Gist, a death penalty opponent, runs a website dedicated to promoting nitrogen asphyxiation for state-sanctioned executions. Polling suggests the public could get behind the idea. In a recent NBC News poll, 1 in 3 people said that if lethal injections are no longer viable, executions should be stopped altogether. But many others were open to alternative methods of putting prisoners to death. About 20 percent opted for the old version of the gas chamber (which traditionally used hydrogen cyanide to kill), 18 percent for the electric chair, 12 percent for death by firing squad, and 8 percent for hanging.

    Nitrogen gas, unlike the lethal drugs that states have relied on, is widely available. The gas is used extensively in industrial settings, from aerospace to oil and gas production “Lethal injection is just fine if you can get the pentobarbital,” says Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a group that favors capital punishment. “But if that’s not available, an alternative like nitrogen gas would work.”

    In contrast to lethal injection, no medical expertise would be needed to introduce nitrogen gas into a sealed chamber. The gas chamber itself is technology that has been around since the 1920s. In fact, three states—Arizona, Missouri, and Wyoming—still authorize lethal gas as a method of execution (depending on the choice of the inmate, the date of the execution or sentence or the possibility that lethal injection is held unconstitutional).

    The last gas chamber execution in the U.S. was in 1999—the method fell out of favor because hydrogen cyanide is a poison causing suffering that lasts 10 minutes or longer. Lethal injection, of course, was supposed to be painless and better. What if it’s not? That’s the question the Supreme Court now finally seems to be returning to. The history of capital punishment suggests that as long as there’s a will to kill criminals, someone will come up with an improved way. The new tool in the executioner’s bag may turn out to be nitrogen, a better way to carry out a gruesome task.

    http://www.slate.com/articles/news_a...h_penalty.html
    Last edited by Helen; 05-24-2014 at 08:03 AM.
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  3. #13
    Banned TheKindExecutioner's Avatar
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    Helen, I posted about nitrogen gas years ago. It's the best since the air we breathe is already 78% nitrogen and the inmate peacefully falls asleep.

    But it's unlikely any state will make the changes required to do it especially with the crackpot antis crying liked spoiled babies about ANY execution method!

  4. #14
    Senior Member Frequent Poster schmutz's Avatar
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    Let me guess...they'll claim accidental decompression could cause the bends?

  5. #15
    Senior Member CnCP Addict Richard86's Avatar
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    You don't need to do many modifications, keep the gurney/chair, just have a face mask that you put on the condemned, connect it to a nitrogen tank, open the tank (and limit pressure to 1 atmosphere). They then drift off.

  6. #16
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    States' use of execution drugs varies widely

    By The Associated Press

    The prolonged execution of an Arizona death row inmate with a new, two-drug combo has highlighted the patchwork quilt approach that states now take with lethal drugs, with types, combinations and dosages varying widely. A question and answer look at how the disparity came about and why, following more than three decades in which all death penalty states used the exact same three-drug mixture.

    Q: What are states currently using for lethal drugs?

    A: Georgia, Texas and Missouri use single doses of compounded pentobarbital, an anesthetic similar to the drug used to put pets to sleep. Arizona and Ohio use a combination of midazolam, a sedative, and hydromorphone, a painkiller. Florida uses midazolam, vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride. Oklahoma has authorized five different lethal injection protocols: a three-drug method beginning with sodium thiopental, pentobarbital, or midazolam, a two-drug procedure using midazolam and hydromorphone, or a single, lethal dose of pentobarbital.

    Q: All death penalty states used the same three-drug combo for lethal injection for more than three decades. Why isn't that done now?

    A: Two reasons. First, supplies of the drugs started to run short as death penalty opponents in Europe put pressure on their drugmakers - which manufactured key anesthetics - to prohibit their use in executions. Secondly, states eager to avoid ongoing lawsuits alleging the old three-drug method caused inmates to suffer unconstitutional levels of pain looked for alternatives beginning about five years ago.

    Q: Why don't all states follow the lead of Georgia, Missouri and Texas and use compounded pentobarbital?

    A: The compounded version is difficult to come by, with most compounding pharmacists reluctant to expose themselves to possible harassment by death penalty opponents. Adopting it also raises the specter of lawsuits over its constitutionality, based on arguments that its purity and potency could be questioned as a non-FDA regulated drug. So far, Georgia, Missouri and Texas won't reveal their sources, while Ohio, whose protocol includes the option of compounded pentobarbital, hasn't been able to obtain it.

    Q: Why can't states just find another drug as effective as pentobarbital?

    A: Basically, options are running out. The leading candidate after pentobarbital was propofol, the painkiller known as the drug that caused pop singer Michael Jackson's 2009 overdose death. Missouri proposed using propofol but withdrew the idea over concerns the move would create a shortage of the popular anesthetic. Meanwhile, manufacturers are also starting to put limits on drugs in the old three-drug combo still in use in states like Florida.

    Q: With all this uncertainty, why don't states return to the electric chair or other non-drug methods?

    A: Most states retired their electric chairs or used them sparingly with the advent of the three-drug method introduced in the 1970s. Tennessee recently enacted a law allowing its use if lethal drugs can't be found, and other states are debating its reintroduction. But electric chairs come with their own constitutional problems, since they have produced a number of botched executions over the years, as did hanging decades ago. Many death penalty experts, even some opponents, believe the quickest and most humane method is the firing squad. But it's unclear whether there's a public appetite for moving to that method.

    http://www.myfoxphoenix.com/story/26...-varies-widely
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  7. #17
    Banned TheKindExecutioner's Avatar
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    I am SHOCKED no state uses the firing squad exclusively. No problem finding bullets and many trained law enforcement will volunteer to do it for free or minimal fee!

    Eventually states likely have to switch unless they nitrogen gas.

  8. #18
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    First use of electric chair: Aug. 6, 1890

    For the first time, a man sits in a chair designed to kill him with electricity. His name is William Kemmler and he has been sentenced to death for killing his wife with an axe. Two years earlier, the state of New York had become the first in the U.S. to legalize death by electricity because it was thought to be a more humane form of execution than hanging.

    The top advocate for the electric chair, a dentist from Buffalo, New York named Albert Southwick, is among those in the room where Kemmler will die. Ever since witnessing an old drunk man killed by touching an electric generator, Southwick has campaigned for execution by electricity because he believed it would be painless. He tells the other witnesses there at Auburn Prison that day that “This is the culmination of 10 years work and study. We live in a higher civilization today.”

    Southwick had actually sought the help of Thomas Edison in finding the best way to electrify a chair. At first, the famous inventor didn’t respond to his letters, but eventually he referred Southwick to the technique used by his chief competitor in the burgeoning electricity industry, George Westinghouse. The two men had very different theories about the best way to transmit electrical power. Edison believed that using a direct current (DC) was necessary; Westinghouse felt an alternating current (AC) was the answer. So Edison thought if AC current was used in the electric chair, the public would associate it with danger and death. Edison went so far as to say that executed criminals would be “Westinghoused.”

    For his part, Westinghouse did what he could to stop the execution. He contributed $100,000 to help cover Kemmler’s legal fees when his lawyers took the case all the way to the U.S Supreme Court. They argued that death in the electric chair would be cruel and unusual punishment. While Edison opposed capital punishment, he did say that if you were going to kill criminals, using electricity was a good idea because it would be “so quick the criminal can’t suffer much."

    Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case with Kemmler. After he was strapped into the chair and had electrodes attached to his head and back, he was jolted with about 1,000 bolts of electricity. After 17 seconds the power was turned off and Kemmler was declared dead. But several of the witnesses noticed that he appeared to still be breathing. Prison officials rushed to shock him again, this time with almost double the voltage. As a New York Times reporter in the room wrote, “An awful odor began to permeate the death chamber, and then, as though to cap the climax of this fearful sight, it was seen that the hair under and around the electrode on the head and the flesh under and around the electrode at the base of the spine was singeing. The stench was unbearable.”

    Several witnesses fainted, others vomited. A little more than two minutes later, Kemmler was declared dead again. The physician who did so, Dr. Edward Spitzka,would later predict that “there will never be another electrocution.”

    After Kemmler, another 4,443 people died in the chair.

    In Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, Kentucky and Virginia, prisoners on Death Row can still choose between electrocution and lethal injection.

    http://www.healthcentral.com/dailydo...air_aug_6_1890
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  9. #19
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    The gas chamber proved very expensive to operate. One state indicated they had to replace all the seals every time they used it for an execution. The seals alone cost thousands of dollars. The chamber itself had quite a few regulations to protect everyone on the outside from being exposed to the gas.

  10. #20
    Senior Member Frequent Poster Steven AB's Avatar
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    The death penalty in the United States is plagued by obstructionism, and nothing can be more degrading for governments, and death penalty advocates, than to bow to it. Instead, it can and must be thwarted.

    What every state should do is to provide a long list of methods including hypoxia, injection, electrocution and calculated-drop hanging, with the choice in each case belonging to the state Executive and not to the convict. Thus the death penalty can be enforced if only one of the methods is both practical and accepted by the courts, and the death penalty ought not to be a self-service.

    Hypoxia can be subject to same obstruction as injection for the obtention of the necessary equipment to apply it. At least when both hypoxia and injection are infeasible, states should not be reluctant to revive older methods. It is necessarily worth the try, since there is no loss to engage in litigation as long as injection is unavailable. One can also regard the ancient, non-sanitized methods as more consistent with the purposes of the death penalty. And once one state will begin, the others will have a persuasive precedent in their favor. For literally every possible method, death penalty opponents will falsely claim that it is a torture, so states should not choose their method on such basis, but simply debunk the slander. Certainly, the first non-voluntary electrocution in decades will at first attract inordinate media attention; but as for Moon landings at the fourth the general public will have already lost any interest.

    But too much an honor would be executions by shooting, or more precisely by firing squad. So it should be used only when no other option is available, and perhaps also when it is already an established custom as in Utah.

    Other efforts can be summarized in two categories (something sure is that, instead of adopting only one of these remedies, better passing bills providing all at the same time — when a statutory change is needed):

    1) Effective remedies that were successfully implemented:

    – Exempting execution procedures from Administrative acts.

    – Statutes providing confidentiality of the provenance of the execution equipment, including drugs (as for the identity of executioners).

    – Removing specification in statutes of the drugs to be used for lethal injection (most states already don’t have such requirement).

    – Buying or renting equipment to other states.

    2) Prospective remedies that have yet to be enforced (when this comment was posted):

    – Convince a majority of the court to adopt Justice Clarence Thomas position in Baze v. Rees (in short, that all 19th-20th-21th century methods are always constitutional, and any claim to the contrary not even a ground for stay). Bucklew v. Precythe was a first step toward that.

    – Obtain the re-authorization of the purchase of foreign drugs, if necessary citing the William Barr-ordered memo on the FDA lack of jurisdiction over that, or by appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court, or both.

    https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/print/volu...new-article-9/

    – In 2014, Missouri Democratic attorney general Chris Koster proposed that the state funds its own laboratory to make the drugs.

    Any state doing that would indeed offset the costs of such policy by also selling the drugs to other states and to the federal government.

    (The drugs could also be made by the FDA, but such policy could be reversed by a later administration, an event less likely to happen in Missouri, Oklahoma, or another red state.)
    Last edited by Steven AB; 01-26-2024 at 12:54 PM.
    "If ever there were a case for a referendum, this is one on which the people should be allowed to express their own views and not irresponsible votes in the House of Commons." — Winston Churchill, on the death penalty

    The self-styled "Death Penalty Information Center" is financed by the oligarchic European Union. — The Daily Signal

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