Sept 22 (Reuters) - The Supreme Court of Alabama is weighing whether to allow the state to become the first to execute a prisoner with a novel method: asphyxiation using nitrogen gas.
Last month, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall asked the court to allow the state to proceed with gassing Kenneth Smith, who was convicted of murder in 1996, using a face mask connected to a cylinder of nitrogen intended to deprive him of oxygen.
Smith's lawyers have said the untested protocol may violate the U.S. Constitution's ban on "cruel and unusual punishments," and have argued a second attempt to execute him by any method is unconstitutional.
In a reply brief filed with the court on Friday, they called the nitrogen gas protocol "so heavily redacted that it is unintelligible," and said Smith had not yet exhausted his appeals.
isnt carbon monoxide the silent killer? why dont we use that (if were so insistent on killing humans)
Silent but not untraumatic and painless. Basically inert gases you don't even realize your not getting oxygen and carbon monoxide is similar but you take it up and it causes many horrible symptoms. For details a combination of these will explain it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asphyxiant_gas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_monoxide_poisoning#Signs_and_symptoms
No. That will burn your lungs like hell. You'll feel like actually suffocating. Nitrogen is an inert gas, so you won't even feel it, another one is helium. You'll pretty much lose consciousness after just a couple breaths and then fade away quietly. It's very commonly used in suicide bags and there's modern assisted suicide methods that use it too.
I think death penalties are barbaric and uncivilized, no matter what, but comparatively it's probably better than almost anything the US used historically.
Nitrogen is inert and already makes up 70% of the air you breath. Your body won't even notice if it's turned up to 100%.
Your body has no sense of oxygen content of the air. What you sense is CO2 buildup in your blood (because it modifies the pH). In a pure nitrogen environment you can still exhale the CO2, but of course do not replenish any O2. It's not just that you won't notice -- there is nothing to notice. Your body literally lacks the sensory ability to detect it.
To be distinguished from a pure CO2 environment where you cannot expel the CO2 so you will feel the effect of being unable to breath.
After taking one or two breaths of N2, there will be so little O2 in your lungs that breathing will actually run your respiration backwards -- it will pull O2 out of your blood instead of bringing it in.
You'll likely experience a light euphoria, get a headache, maybe feel a bit dizzy. But this will happen so fast it's hard to even be certain -- unconsciousness in under a minute is expected and within just a few breaths is possible.