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submitted 1 year ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

Alabama is seeking to become the first state to execute a prisoner by making him breathe pure nitrogen.

The Alabama attorney general’s office on Friday asked the state Supreme Court to set an execution date for death row inmate Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58. The court filing indicated Alabama plans to put him to death by nitrogen hypoxia, an execution method that is authorized in three states but has never been used.

Nitrogen hypoxia is caused by forcing the inmate to breathe only nitrogen, depriving them of oxygen and causing them to die. Nitrogen makes up 78% of the air inhaled by humans and is harmless when inhaled with oxygen. While proponents of the new method have theorized it would be painless, opponents have likened it to human experimentation.

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[-] flossdaily@lemmy.world 216 points 1 year ago

That's a pretty good way to go, apparently.

But there have been an absolutely breathtaking number of death row cases that have been overturned due to new evidence that had exonerated the condemned.

It seems pretty clear that the state is doing a very crappy job of determining guilt, and therefore shouldn't be handing down such a permanent sentence.

[-] HonoraryMancunian@lemmy.world 54 points 1 year ago

breathtaking

Heh

[-] madcaesar@lemmy.world 41 points 1 year ago

I used to fully pro death penalty, especially for some of the sick fucks...

But then I learned about all the false convictions, some COERCED by the fucking police, and since then I'm 100% against the death penalty.

The satisfaction I get from a heinous killer getting killed, does not outweigh the horror I feel for even one innocent life being taken by the state.

[-] insomniac@sh.itjust.works 21 points 1 year ago

It’s also cheaper to keep people in jail forever than put them to death because of all the appeals. And despite being more careful, we still get it wrong.

[-] Agent_of_Kayos@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Also, in my mind, death is a release. Keep those fuckers stuck in their filty meat suits while they rot in prison for the rest of their lives with no hope for escape. The especially heinous ones will get extra comeuppance from the other inmates

[-] nomadjoanne@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Right. Even a life sentence can very much be reversed if exculpatory evidence appears.

[-] SheeEttin@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

It can be overturned, but it can't be reversed. You can't give someone those years back.

[-] TenderfootGungi@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

This is what changed my mind on the death penalty. I have no problem putting a murderer or pedo to death, but we keep freeing people when new evidence is found that proves their innocents. Until we can get it right 100% of the time, we should just lock them up until death.

[-] assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah this is one reason why I generally don't support the death penalty. There's no way to undo it. At least if evidence exonerates someone 50 years later, they're still alive.

[-] HelixDab2@lemm.ee -1 points 1 year ago

I would argue that we need the death penalty as a way to protect society from the absolutely most dangerous criminals but it's very frequently misapplied. I would say, for instance, that people that are serial killers, or serial rapists (or serial child molesters), people for whom there is no significant doubt that they're guilty, and people that will reoffend if they ever manage to get out of prison, should be executed. A simple murder for hire, or a robbery? No. Ed Kemper? Absolutely.

I think that even life sentences with no parole are overused; most people can be rehabilitated and returned to society safely, if we were willing to dramatically overhaul our criminal justice system to not be based on punishment and retribution. (But if we did that, then how would we get free prison labor...? /s)

[-] tryptaminev@feddit.de 8 points 1 year ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_by_country

All of western Europe has abolished the death oenalty completely. Many of these are countries with very low rates of serious crime.

Meanwhile countries with the death penalty, but usually also very long prison sentences and high rates of incarcerations like the US are pretty bad with crime.

It is impossible to justifiy the death penalty empirically. The statistics actually indicate that the death penalty is linked to more crime.

Also the problem is, that clear cut beyond a doubt is what every judge who sentences someone to death, will claim about the case. Yet there is hundreds of cases in the US alone, where people were later exonerated. Some only after they have been murdered by the state already. There is nothing to gain, but a lot to loose with an execution. It cannot be overruled anymore.

[-] HelixDab2@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

The statistics actually indicate that the death penalty is linked to more crime.

Correlation =/= causation. C'mon, you know better than this. It's more probable that they have lower crime to begin with. Serial killers are not uniquely American by any stretch of the imagination, but they are quite uncommon relative to the population in other developed countries.

Read what I wrote again. I'm advocating for the death penalty in very, very limited cases, where there is no significant doubt at all, where there is no reasonable or even unreasonable belief that an offender can be rehabilitated, and the offender is extremely likely to harm more people if they ever have the opportunity.

[-] tryptaminev@feddit.de 0 points 1 year ago

Thats why i said indicate not "proof". But again you say no significant doubt at all. But that is always the case of the people making the decision. For them there is no doubt, yet there is regularly wrong decisions.

[-] HelixDab2@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Would you then claim that there was any significant doubt as to the guilt of John Gacy, Theodore Bundy, Edmund Kemper, Gary Ridgeway, John Geoghan, et al.? Would you agree that they would have all posed a significant risk of future harms had they managed to escape?

No proof is 100% absolute; there is always the possibility of some error. Video evidence? Could be tampered with. Eyewitnesses? Memory is fallible. DNA? Must be from someone with near identical DNA. Confession? Those are very frequently coerced (and, seriously, confessions are a pretty terrible way of determining guilt, esp. when there's no forensic or corroborating evidence). 29 bodies or people you were last seen with found in the crawlspace of your home with your DNA and fingerprints on them? Pure coincidence, it's too good to be true, must be planted.

Given that it's impossible to know a thing with absolute certainty, how good does the evidence have to be before you would admit that there was not a significant chance of a false positive?

[-] Franzia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 year ago

It's wild you disagree with life sentences and desire rehab, but also advocate for the death penalty.

[-] HelixDab2@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

I advocate for it in the case of people that can not reasonably be rehabilitated and pose an unreasonable risk to the existence of other people.

I don't know why that's difficult to wrap your head around.

You aren't going to rehabilitate a serial killer, or a serial rapist.

[-] Franzia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 year ago

Can't know if you don't try. Some artists have come out and said they had these urges and art is the thing anchoring them enough to keep them from doing heinous things.

[-] HelixDab2@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

keep them from doing

...And there's your key. Moreover, they think that art keeps them from doing it; they have no way of experimentally knowing whether or not they'd do those things in the absence of art. It seems more likely that art is their excuse and that, in the absence of art, they would find anothe,r different reason to avoid committing atrocities.

There's a distinction between wanting to do a thing, and actually doing the thing.

[-] Agent_of_Kayos@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Prisons (at least in the US) have never been about prisoners and their reform. It's about how much money they can bring in from the state and practically free labor. Like most things in the US it is driving by profit margins.

....yay capitalism

[-] HelixDab2@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

Eh, no. We had prisons before we used prisons as a stand-in for chattel slavery. OTOH, we used to kill a lot more people for much less severe offenses, so people didn't usually end up in jails for very long. And there was a period of time where we believed in reform, but that was well over 100 years ago now.

this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2023
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