Nitrogen Hypoxia Is a Painless Way to Die
January 25, 2024 3:16pm
Before this day is done, Alabama will execute Kenneth Eugene Smith. Smith, along with John Forrest Parker, stabbed Elizabeth Sennett to death inside her home in Colbert County, Alabama on March 18, 1988. The payment for that murder-for-hire was $1000.
Upon conviction, they were both sentenced to death. Parker was executed via lethal injection in June 2010. But when officials tried to carry out the execution of Smith in November 2022, they could not get a needle into his vein before the death warrant expired, so the execution was aborted. His execution was eventually scheduled for today.
What makes tonight's execution notable is that it will be the first nitrogen hypoxia execution in the United States. Nitrogen hypoxia is a very painless way to die. Nitrogen is an inert gas with no taste or smell. The air we breath is 78% nitrogen, so the human body is conditioned to inhale it. Via a facemask, Smith will inhale pure nitrogen. The resulting lack of oxygen will cause his painless death. The pain a person feels during suffocation is not due to a lack of oxygen. It is due to a build-up of carbon dioxide. Because execution via nitrogen hypoxia does not build up carbon dioxide, the prisoner will painlessly lose consciousness as if going to sleep. He'll just never wake up. It inflicts less pain than the needle used for lethal injection does. How do we know this? Because when workers die from nitrogen hypoxia in industrial accidents, they show no signs whatsoever of distress or attempts to escape the affected area. Unconsciousness just sneaks up on them without warning.
So, unlike the extremely painful death Smith inflicted upon Mrs. Sennett 36 years ago, he will die tonight with no physical pain whatsoever. It seems like a good way to go. But if the Constitution didn't prohibit it, I'd be fine if he was stabbed to death. For the record, if it was up to me, every state in the nation would impose mandatory death penalties for all people convicted of murder, attempted murder, aggravated sexual battery, and arson. And it would be carried out swiftly with none of this "36 years on death row" crap. Because to allow such people to live means society values the life of the guilty more than it values the life of the innocent.