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The state of Arizona is preparing to kill death row inmates using hydrogen cyanide, the same lethal gas that was deployed at Auschwitz
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- Title
- Arizona 'refurbishes' its gas chamber to prepare for executions, documents reveal
- Authors
- Ed Pilkington
- Published
- May 28 2021
- Word count
- 1059 words
My dad has spent many months working in Arizona fighting for their death row inmates. There was a botched execution a while back that made national news. Definitively not the kind of thing you want to be your most high profile case.
Having been raised by the guy I’m 100% against the death penalty. There are plenty of practical arguments. But fundamentally people should abandon their bloodlust when they live in our society. I understand those closely affected by horrific acts can’t forgive, but they don’t perform the sentencing. Judges should rule with a cool head, lawmakers write with a cool pen, and the public should stop demanding murder in cold blood as punishment for murder in cold blood.
The reality of death row is that most people there are mentally ill, mentally deficient, and are not the most wild of mass murderers we imagine when thinking of the ideal use case of capital punishment.
Interesting enough, the families of the victim often don't feel closure after the perpetrator gets executed.
Source
That's because closure is not really a thing. As a non American I find the whole concept baffling, to be honest. That's just not how mourning works.
I agree. It's just an unhealthy vengeance thing.
As always, I quote my own reasoning against the death penalty:
I've been changing my mind on how I feel about capital punishment. I'm not sure where I read it, but there was a sentence I read that said something like, "capital punishment is punishment for those without capital" that really brought home to me how screwed up the system is.
I don't often see things where my only response is "that's horrible." Our executions have gotten worse than the murders they are used to punish.
This isn't my tipping point to say we shouldn't be doing executions, to make it clear. I draw the line at knowing for sure somebody is deserving of death through our justice system, which also, conveniently, seems to be another thing we Americans can't do.
Maybe the gas is more okay than lethal injection. That doesn't make it right by any measure. If they're set on the death penalty just use a large dose of fentanyl or bring back the guillotine which is messy but quick.
It should be noted that it isn't as quick as it looks from an observer's perspective. It takes time for the brain to die, and that can be several potentially agonizing seconds.
Seconds is still better than gassing someone to death, which takes minutes.
A death by firing squad aiming at the head sounds the most preferrable to me. If you want the quickest way to die, you have to destroy the brain. A contraption similar to the guillotine where you drop a heavy enough block of stone or concrete on the head and eviscerate it completely might also be an option.
That being said, capital punishment shouldn't exist either way. The only time I'm really torn on it is in cases where the perpetrator killed a lot of people and is unquestionably guilty. Anders Breivik comes to mind, or the Christchurch shooter. That being said, I still think that spending the rest of their lives in prison if they cannot be rehabilitated is a far worse punishment anyway.
That is what I would choose also. I guess the problem in that case would be that the wake couldn't be an open casket one, so more pain to the family I guess.
But a single shot to the head with a high caliber weapon would be pretty much guaranteed, right?
I think there's a few gasses that could be preferable still. Carbon Monoxide is a common one, not sure how that would feel. Beyond that this makes me think that hypoxia would be a good way to go too, relatively speaking. Of course, neither of these is as final as we would want it to be, but at least it should make sure no pain can be perceived for whatever comes next.
You know, now that I think of it, why isn’t asphyxiation the standard for death penalty? The body has no way of knowing how much oxygen it has. The only way you feel like you are drowning or can’t breathe is through co2 buildup. In a pure nitrogen atmosphere, I think you will just be fine until you aren’t, and go unconscious.
Well, wadya think? Find your answer here - because US society is vengeful. You can't just let the bad guys escape painless and easy.
Absolutely. The US really needs a reform of the entire justice system.
However, I did find this article talking about Oklahoma. It is surprising that Oklahoma would lead the way on something like this, but I hope all states follow their lead. In my opinion the death penalty should not exist in any form, but while it does, nitrogen hypoxia seems like a really good method.
I hadn't even considered that a possibility. Thanks for linking it.
I wondered about that too. Specifically, I wondered if death by hydrogen cyanide was particularly gruesome or if it just made for good headlines because of the association with Nazis. Turns out, it not great. It works by blocking the absorption of oxygen, and organs which are usually oxygen rich (like the lungs) are hit the hardest. It doesn't just displace oxygen, it actively prohibits your cellular intake of oxygen. Inmates killed with the gas seem to suffer, choke, cough and display general signs of suffocation before eventually slipping unconscious and dying. It can take seconds or minutes, depending on the individual and how quickly the gas fills the room. It can take a while for the gas concentration in the room to reach lethal levels, and up until then you're just slowly being choked. I'm sure this could be solved with better engineering, but honestly the ways in which the article described them testing the chamber don't leave much room for confidence there.
For the life of me, I don't understand why they don't use something like carbon monoxide. It's supposed to just make you feel really sleepy before killing you, no choking or suffocation required. You can't convince me it's a legal thing, they're already using a chemical proven to cause undue suffering and the article says they didn't even buy the right kind of cyanide the law requires them to but that they intend to use it anyways. That only leaves the possibility it's a just to throw someone a sweet contract, or they actually want people to suffer. I detest both possibilities.
Nitrogen hypoxia is an approved method of execution in several states, but it's untested and not without potential problems.
At this point they might as well just go for death by rollercoaster
I'm incredibly torn on the death penalty from a moral standpoint. Part of me thinks it should exist but only for the most heinous of crimes. The other part of me thinks that giving such criminals an easy way out is a bad thing and that they should rot in prison for their crimes.
Another problem I have with it is that wrongful convictions can and do happen. At least where the death penalty is abolished, these people can be released. You can't bring back an innocent person from the dead.
This is a quite... um.. old fashioned attitude to the justice system. Prison shouldn't be punishment. Prison is for keeping people out of wider society during their rehabilitation, until they're ready to re-enter that society and be a useful part of it.
I don't care whether people think that's some kind of weak-ass pinko nonsense, the facts are pretty solid. Rehabilitative justice works, as does restorative justice. It's cheaper in the long run, it has lower rates of recidivism and regardless of your ideas about punishment (which generally doesn't work, for some reason society has accepted that when training dogs but not people) when it comes down to spending tax money, why would anyone want to do anything other than the most cost-efficient way? Why would you want a course of action which leads to more crime than the other option? Ignore the criminals themselves, think about the victims of those future crimes, and the tax money which could be being spent on something more useful.
On the death penalty - I would argue that murder is never justice, no matter how sure you are of someone's guilt. Negative/rule-breaking behaviours are almost always expressions of deeper issues either in society or the perpetrator's mental state (or both). It's far better to try to address those things, I think.
Yes. The carrot is always better than the stick, and it is never optional.
Just think about your own behaviour: Whenever you would want to see positive change in yourself, would you wish someone else enforced it by a) rewarding you or b) punishing you? If your answer is b), I'll color myself surprised but won't kink shame. But if you agree with a), you should apply the same reasoning to criminal justice. And frankly, a bunch of other situations where we apply this vindictive logic.
I generally support rehabilitation of criminals, but there are some crimes where rehabilitative and restorative justice is simply out of the question.
When I state "most heinous of crimes", I'm not referring to the whole list of offences that may be punishable by the death penalty in US law. A lot of these can be tackled in some way through rehabilitation, especially drug related offences.
My idea of heinous crime would be things like genocide, serial killing, sexual explotation of children leading to death.
What makes those particularly more out of the question than others?
No disagreement from me that those are awful acts - but the people who do those things are very likely mentally ill. People who don't have something wrong in their heads don't commit horrific crimes. So while I do agree we probably can't rehabilitate everyone, we can still try and the reason those people are in prison isn't so they can "rot", but so that society is being kept safe from the effects of their illnesses.
The end result - which is that these people are locked up for the rest of their lives, is the same - but I do think the underlying reason matters. If not for the criminals then certainly for the example being set for rest of society. We should think of prisons as part of the care system, like healthcare and social care and so on - it's just sometimes that care is manifest by keeping certain people the fuck out of everyone else's way behind several well-locked doors.