47 minutes of pain

[Napoleon the Clown]

So why not give giant amounts of heroin or something to these people? Should be a pain free way to die. I guess it's stupid for X reasons but look at the reality of the situation we got here.

Better way to do it. Have the cell they await execution in be capable of being gas sealed. Then you give them an injection of a mild sedative or sleep medication, say, ambien or something like along those lines. Maybe Valium. Wait until they are comfortably asleep. Then, you pump pure nitrogen gas into the cell from a container of liquid N2. It is denser than oxygen, so the oxygen will be displaced. They die from hypoxia, but because they can still vent CO2, their body wont notice. They to sleep, they never wake up. No chance for a boxed execution ever.

Dunno about Valium, but I can tell you from personal experience that it's quite possible to shrug off Ambien like it's nothing. One of the drugs they threw at my sleep disorder was Ambien and it didn't do shit to me. Part and parcel with certain sleep disorders, so you're still going to get dosage problems with that method. Not to mention, Ambien is notorious for making people trip balls. Which can lead to panic. So not exactly the best way to go about executing someone humanely. Fuck-ups would still happen.

[Elheru Aran]

Well, one presumes you could just try different medications beforehand and see how they work. They aren't going anywhere, after all, and it is one of the few environments where individuals are fairly constantly monitored...

[SCRawl]

Have the cell they await execution in be capable of being gas sealed. Then you give them an injection of a mild sedative or sleep medication, say, ambien or something like along those lines. Maybe Valium. Wait until they are comfortably asleep. Then, you pump pure nitrogen gas into the cell from a container of liquid N2. It is denser than oxygen, so the oxygen will be displaced...

I would not expect nitrogen to be heavier than oxygen. It is, though?

Denser, but not heavier. You wouldn't think so because its atomic weight is lighter than oxygen.

http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/gas-d ... d_158.html

Simple chemistry and physics tells me that nitrogen gas should be less dense than oxygen (at STP). Alyrium, I think your plan has a flaw.

[Mr. Coffee]

Simple chemistry and physics tells me that nitrogen gas should be less dense than oxygen (at STP). Alyrium, I think your plan has a flaw.

Then use a hypobaric chamber. Same exact death mechanism, and no medical technicians needed at all. Just strap the condemned to a chair, wheel them into the chamber, set the altitude for 10,000m, have the executioner pull the condemned's O2 mask and wait an hour. No worries about sedatives not working or needing trained medical personnel needed other than someone to call time of death.

[Simon_Jester]

Dunno about Valium, but I can tell you from personal experience that it's quite possible to shrug off Ambien like it's nothing. One of the drugs they threw at my sleep disorder was Ambien and it didn't do shit to me.

Figuring out someone's tolerance shouldn't be too hard; "look, do you WANT to be conscious for the shit we're going to do?" I know someone with Ambien resistance- they can, however, get well and truly conked out by a megadose of the stuff.

Part and parcel with certain sleep disorders, so you're still going to get dosage problems with that method. Not to mention, Ambien is notorious for making people trip balls. Which can lead to panic. So not exactly the best way to go about executing someone humanely. Fuck-ups would still happen.

Point.

[Raw Shark]

It's because the people doing executions aren't medical professionals. Doctors and related medic types spend many years learning how use these drugs which is why they get consistent results - and even then there ARE accountants of people waking up during the middle of surgery. [snip]

This happened to me once when I was a kid. Lifetime stockpile of high-octane nightmare fuel: acquired.

[Beowulf]

Denser, but not heavier. You wouldn't think so because its atomic weight is lighter than oxygen.

http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/gas-d ... d_158.html

Simple chemistry and physics tells me that nitrogen gas should be less dense than oxygen (at STP). Alyrium, I think your plan has a flaw.

Less of one than you'd think. Still need a gas tight chamber, but as you add nitrogen, you end up with a slight positive pressure, so you let that vent out. Position vent appropriately (near the floor). Eventually, you end up with a chamber with a very low partial pressure of oxygen, person falls asleep, and never wakes up. Leave them alone until the heart rate monitor flat-lines.

[Darmalus]

As long as we are getting more and more elaborate, why not use the guillotine? As far as I know as long as it's kept well maintained it's basically fool proof.

[Mr Bean]

As long as we are getting more and more elaborate, why not use the guillotine? As far as I know as long as it's kept well maintained it's basically fool proof.

Desecration of the body, same reason we don't kill people via dropping a 5 ton block on them or why we've gotten away from firing squads.

[Spectre_nz]

Simple chemistry and physics tells me that nitrogen gas should be less dense than oxygen (at STP). Alyrium, I think your plan has a flaw.

At STP of both, yes, but, starting from Liquid nitrogen, the gas you get is considerably colder than the surrounding air and so does have a slight propensity to settle in still conditions. When I'm decanting LN2, I can check with my gas monitor and read 21.9% O2 at my face but 5% O2 at my feet.

The detailed situation will have all kinds of interesting turbulence and mixing at the boundaries of the big cold cloud of gas, but for practical purposes, you end up with more N2 at your feet at least until the temperatures start to even out. Even at equal temperatures, the mixing is rather slow, especially if you're in an enclosed space with one small opening. Storage tanks flushed with N2 have a nasty habit of killing hapless workers because it takes so long for the internal gas composition to exchange with the outside air unless you have a large fan than can completely exchange a volume of air equivalent to several times the tank volume before you enter.

As long as your air flow in and out of a space is lower than the inflow of whatever pure N2 you're using, you'll dilute the oxygen content of the space, like pouring rum into a glass full of coke. If you keep pouring, you end up with more or less entirely rum with such a small amount of coke that it doesn't bother mentioning.

As soon as you dilute below 6% oxygen at normal pressure, you'll have about 40 seconds of useful consciousness and then death in a few minutes. Lowered pressure will do exactly the same thing. Reduced partial pressure of oxygen. Get it low enough, dead within minutes.

[Broomstick]

Do you have any idea what sort of "desecration" a typical autopsy imposes on a human body? We don't chop heads off due to squeamishness about spilling blood, not because of "desecration" concerns.

[Mr Bean]

Do you have any idea what sort of "desecration" a typical autopsy imposes on a human body? We don't chop heads off due to squeamishness about spilling blood, not because of "desecration" concerns.

We rarely do autopsy with the family present. And they put everything back after an autopsy. Enough the family can't tell what happen to the body once it's in the nice dress or suite in the coffin.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I'd imagine that we don't consider using the guillotine to have something to do with its use in the French Revolution and Nazi Germany.

And yes, I know it was used in France until 1981 or so but still, when you say guillotine, French Revolution is what you think.

I still maintain that if you have to kill someone, a firing squad is the best bet.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I don't understand how it's so hard to get the dosage correct. I've been put under a few times for various minor surgeries and they have a trained professional hook an IV up to my arm, start the drip, have me count backwards from 10 or talk about one of my favorite hobbies or something simple. In the middle of the conversation the lights in the room get all wavy and funky looking but I carry on as nothing had happened. Turns out I had been knocked out clean cold mid-sentence and never knew it. Now if they had bumped up the dosage I never would have woken up. Why can't that be done for executions?

The reason it is not done is because doctors do not participate in executions, as I recall. They are professionally barred from doing so, as killing someone with their consent who is terminally ill is a sticky wicket for them. Against their will? Oh Fuck No. The vast majority of doctors take the hippocratic oath seriously.

My sister is a vet and as part of her training has to work in a slaughterhouse that uses these techniques on pigs, oftentimes it is botched due to incorrect dosages. Apparently it is very hard to get the dosage correct for pigs alone, so...

Granted that could be solved via a long exposure and much stronger dosage but in the end it would probably still rely on disciplined doctors unless you just use so much nitrogen that all is displaced.

That is what you do. Dont worry about getting the partial pressure juuuuust right. No. You flood the room with nitrogen gas. Completely displace all oxygen, have a vent so the displaced O2 can escape, and shut the vent when an O2 sensor reads partial pressure O2 at ~0 passing through the vent. Wait 20 minutes. Done.

And we don't need a giant sealed room, when a little breath mask and some restraints work just fine, it's not like you won't have time to get their measurements to get an exact dosage required... then triple it to be safe/

It all depends. How much do you want to relieve anxiety in the condemned? How much do you want to ritualize the killing? How much do you want to automate the process or split it up between multiple people to diffuse responsibility and thus psychological guilt?

Of, you know, stand them against a wall and shoot them in the head. Not clean but definitely quick.

Doing it is psychologically traumatizing for the executioner.

It is actually one of the reasons three drugs are used. It is part of a ritual process that splits up responsibility during the execution between multiple people. Each one is a cog in the machine, and feels less guilt than they would if one person just injected the person with a fuck ton of Ambien.

I would not expect nitrogen to be heavier than oxygen. It is, though?

You are right, it is less dense. I mentally transposed them in my Mind-Periodic-Table. Either way, it need not be. The gas-displacement vent could just as easily be in the floor, or you could not bother and use a mask. Or, not bother with a vent and drop partial O2 pressure down to almost nothing by pure volumetric displacement and internal air circulation by way of ceiling fan.

Or, fuck, use Helium, Argon, CO. There are a fuckton of choices for asphyxiant gases.

Dunno about Valium, but I can tell you from personal experience that it's quite possible to shrug off Ambien like it's nothing. One of the drugs they threw at my sleep disorder was Ambien and it didn't do shit to me. Part and parcel with certain sleep disorders, so you're still going to get dosage problems with that method. Not to mention, Ambien is notorious for making people trip balls. Which can lead to panic. So not exactly the best way to go about executing someone humanely. Fuck-ups would still happen.

The point was to use a mild sedative. If a dose of ambien (or whatever) does not take, they can still wait until the condemned falls asleep in their own. The point was to minimize distress to the condemned by having them basically go to sleep calm and never wake up. Other drugs may be better for that, but I dont have a pharmacopia handy.

[Jaepheth]

You could program an AI hangman; I imagine botched hangings would be virtually impossible, and machines don't suffer from depression.

Why is exsanguination not considered? Use a hypodermic needle to tap the femoral artery and pump the blood into a waste container. They'll pass out/die in a few minutes, right?


My train of thought on the death penalty:
I see only 3 reasons to punish someone. Revenge/compensation, behavior modification/rehabilitation, or prevention/deterrence.

Since the death penalty is usually used in cases of murder, compensation is off the table since you can't bring the person back.
If you kill the perpetrator then rehabilitation is right out.
That leaves revenge, and deterrence.
Revenge is a tempting motivation, but the slightest possibility of a wrongful execution, in my mind, would disqualify the death penalty under this reason.

Deterrence then is the only remaining excuse for the death penalty that could possibly justify, utility-wise, even a single wrongful execution.
If deterrence is the goal then executions should be public spectacle. For the lesson to best be learned, it should be taught during formative years; that means they should be mandatory viewing in schools. So why is this not the case? Well, for one we don't want to be a violent and "barbaric" culture, and we also put some value in the dignity and rights of the condemned, thus the concern over punishments being cruel or unusual. On top of all that, I'm fairly certain available research shows no deterrent effect of the death penalty. Which makes sense since many crimes currently warranting death arise from mental defect or emotional outburst. Put all together, I believe this disqualifies deterrence as a valid reason to execute criminals.

The only other reason I can think of is if the risk of a particularly dangerous individual escaping custody and re-offending outweigh the risks of putting an innocent person to death. (In this case, I suppose execution works as prevention, but not deterrence) I don't have numbers, but I can't imagine that's the case. Especially with today's number of wrongful executions. Even if that were the case I would think the better action would be to improve prisons or parole procedures.

[/spiel]

Duplicate post deleted - SCRawl

[Terralthra]

Do you have any idea what sort of "desecration" a typical autopsy imposes on a human body? We don't chop heads off due to squeamishness about spilling blood, not because of "desecration" concerns.

That and because I think it's rather inhumane to use a method of execution whereby the deceased spends his or her last 30 seconds of life potentially staring at their own decapitated body. Brain function doesn't stop when decapitated, it lasts until the oxygen within the brain is used up.

[bilateralrope]

A very cynical part of me wonders if the companies providing the current death penalty drugs knows that they are being used for killing people. Though I realize that it's much more likely that the drug providers are worried about their other customers leaving if word gets out, since I doubt the death drugs are anything beyond a minor part of their business.

Does anyone know enough about the process of producing the death drugs to know how difficult it is to prevent impurities with undesired effects in the finished product ?

[SCRawl]

Do you have any idea what sort of "desecration" a typical autopsy imposes on a human body? We don't chop heads off due to squeamishness about spilling blood, not because of "desecration" concerns.

That and because I think it's rather inhumane to use a method of execution whereby the deceased spends his or her last 30 seconds of life potentially staring at their own decapitated body. Brain function doesn't stop when decapitated, it lasts until the oxygen within the brain is used up.

Then you could chloroform them first. Cheap, easy, effective. Just as bloody, though, so it's a non-starter.

(This is not to say that I would approve of this method, or of capital punishment in general. I'm just proposing a potential solution to the problem of severed heads and their last experiences.)

[General Zod]

You could program an AI hangman; I imagine botched hangings would be virtually impossible, and machines don't suffer from depression.

Someone still has to install the hangman and turn it on. You're not going to take the human factor out of the equation that easily. Honestly it would just be easier for humanity to admit we're a bunch of blood thirsty hypocrites that don't want to get our own hands dirty.

[loomer]

Why is exsanguination not considered? Use a hypodermic needle to tap the femoral artery and pump the blood into a waste container. They'll pass out/die in a few minutes, right?

Because it would be a horrifying way to die, probably. Death by blood loss is relatively painless but the body goes into shock during it. It's not a pleasant way to go just because it doesn't come attached with minutes of screaming.

[mr friendly guy]

Barbituates. Not usually prescribed these days since we have benzodiazepines. However barbituates are used in countries with voluntary euthanasia. Moreover with barbituates, the difference between lethal and therapeutic doses is only slight (one of the reasons they aren't liked).

[Broomstick]

You could program an AI hangman; I imagine botched hangings would be virtually impossible, and machines don't suffer from depression.

The history of hangings has plenty of examples of decapitation in botched hangings (even though it was fatal it was considered bad form) or people slowly strangling to death instead of dying quickly from a snapped neck, not to mention there is probably some continuing consciousness even in a “clean hang” where the neck does snap on scheduled.

Why is exsanguination not considered? Use a hypodermic needle to tap the femoral artery and pump the blood into a waste container. They'll pass out/die in a few minutes, right?

Potentially you can bleed out in under 60 seconds if a big artery like the femoral or carotid is severed properly for that purpose... the problem is finding someone able to pull it off with some skill. That sort of thing usually requires some practice and most executioners these days aren't doing enough to really become expert.

I see only 3 reasons to punish someone. Revenge/compensation, behavior modification/rehabilitation, or prevention/deterrence.

There is a fourth reason: protection/defense of others in the community.

It's not really an issue much anymore as modern prisons are pretty secure. In less developed societies, though, execution is carried out against people who can not be contained who present a direct and present threat to the community. This is seen in hunter-gatherer societies, for example, because they don't have jails and can't contain someone intent on committing murder after murder. Someone who can't be contained could be justifiably eliminated to protect others.

Do you have any idea what sort of "desecration" a typical autopsy imposes on a human body? We don't chop heads off due to squeamishness about spilling blood, not because of "desecration" concerns.

That and because I think it's rather inhumane to use a method of execution whereby the deceased spends his or her last 30 seconds of life potentially staring at their own decapitated body. Brain function doesn't stop when decapitated, it lasts until the oxygen within the brain is used up.

Still probably better than spending 45 minutes with the sensation of fire burning up your blood vessels.

Bottom line, it's pretty damn hard to come up with a reliable execution method that is truly painless.

Does anyone know enough about the process of producing the death drugs to know how difficult it is to prevent impurities with undesired effects in the finished product ?

The “death drugs” are ordinary pharmaceuticals used every day for routine surgeries or in other medical treatments, they're just given in overwhelmingly lethal doses. At least in theory that's how it works, as we've seen the practice sometimes falls short of theory.

[Darmalus]

I wonder if it would be cheaper to just hunt down and hire a few sociopaths who wouldn't be bothered by bloodily killing people than this squeamish song and dance we go through.

I'm pro death penalty, but also anti-suffering. Either rehabilitate people or dispose of them, don't just warehouse them for decades until they die of old age or emerge completely out of date and useless to society. And I'm reasonably certain we could rehabilitate most criminals.

[General Zod]

I wonder if it would be cheaper to just hunt down and hire a few sociopaths who wouldn't be bothered by bloodily killing people than this squeamish song and dance we go through.

I'm pro death penalty, but also anti-suffering. Either rehabilitate people or dispose of them, don't just warehouse them for decades until they die of old age or emerge completely out of date and useless to society. And I'm reasonably certain we could rehabilitate most criminals.

How do you justify the death penalty in light of recent studies that show at least 4.1% of all inmates sentenced to death are most likely innocent? http://rt.com/usa/155472-death-row-inma ... ent-study/

Given the sheer amount of people we lock away and sentence to death that's not an insignificant number.

[loomer]

I personally hold that we should make it an opt-in option for anyone serving a life sentence without a possibility of parole. I also support euthanasia for anyone with a reasonable desire for it, so it's just an extension of that policy. They can choose to live there, or they can voluntarily die without all the drama and trouble that suicide attempts bring on.