202
UN experts alarmed by Alabama plan to kill prisoner using untried gas method
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2024
202 points (92.8% liked)
News
23669 readers
3579 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Yes, nitrogen hypoxia is untried as a method of intentional execution.
But it's well-understood as a method of suicide, and as a way of accidentally dying.
It's just about the most pleasant, least awful way to die. Your body is wired to detect dangerously high blood levels of CO2, not dangerously low blood levels of O2. So you breathe out CO2, breathe in pure nitrogen, and you get none of that panic feeling that you would normally get if your airway was cut off. It's like breathing in helium from a balloon; you feel short of breath and get light headed. If it continues, you quickly pass out. IIRC, this was the method of suicide advocated by the former Hemlock Society, back in the bad old days before even Dr. Jack Kevorkian.
I ain't sayin' that Alabama uses the death penalty appropriately. (Yes, I support the death penalty, but not in the overwhelming majority of the cases where it's used now.) But if you're going to execute people, this is probably one of the most humane ways to do it.