A thread where Ancalagon makes a man being strangled to death about himself

Tonight Kennith Smith became the first American executed by Nitrous Gas.

Increasingly medical companies have decided that providing chemicals to kill people isn’t something they really want to be behind.

This has delayed a LOT of executions but while some states have used this as an excuse to just not kill people other states have used as a way to get creative.

Earlier today SCOTUS said Alabama could try executing someone via nitrous oxide.

They tried.

It worked.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/othe...othing-happened-to-bring-her-back/ar-BB1hhuOF

I don’t like it when people are executed in Alabama. It is what it is and I have no control over it but it messes with me more than it should.

Maybe because in all the small towns in Alabama Holman Prison is in mine?

When I was 15 I spent a summer working side by side with a work release guy in the back of Johnson Ford. I was young and he was cool in a Rebel Without a Cause way. He seemed like decent dude that had made some poor decisions.

Couple years later when he got caught stealing by a woman he had been doing odd jobs he killed her and her two children.

He’d met the family at their local Chevy dealership where he worked in the back.

I think of him every time an Alabama execution makes news and go and check and see if he is still on Death Row.

He is.

I bet he is extremely isolated. The kind of person that has done what he’s done probably doesn’t have a lot of friends.

I think that as just an empathetic human being that I should reach out.

Write a letter.

But then who am to him? Some 15yo kid he worked with while on work release three decades ago? And who is he? A piece of shit that chased children down to stab them to death?

I never write the letter.

In case y’all think I am bullshitting Billy Robitaille, Death Row, Holman Prison, Atmore Alabama.

Steve Martin in "Little Shop Of Horrors" took himself out that way by accident.
I suppose anything that could accidentally kill you could be done on purpose.
How about slam a guy's neck on a counter top?
No fancy gas to buy.
Have a big guy like me stand on a guy's head, and wait for the crunch.
There's lots of cheap ways to take a guy out.
Why does the state insist on pricey? Razz-a-matazz?
Showbiz?

So much like where I'm at. Do I think The State should be in the business of killing people? No. However, I was at FSU when Ted Bundy rampaged through the Chi Omega house. I was a reporter when Bobby Joe Long went on his spree in the Tampa Bay area. I was there when Oba Chandler strangled a woman and her two daughters, then tied their bodies to cement blocks and threw them in the bay. If anything, the electric chair and/or lethal injections were too good for them. I have no doubt that I could have been put on the witness list for executions while Florida was still using the electric chair. Somehow I never got around to it.

Joking aside, frying a criminal is like hacking off a mole with a kitchen knife, and ignoring the cancer underneath.
How many of these guys had their brains scrambled by heavy metals?
Nah, let's not shut down the chemical plant, let's just keep frying guys.

Turdforge leftists have changed my mind a few times in the 10+ years I’ve been here, execution is one of those times. The only exception I might be willing to make is treason. Even then I’m not so sure. Congratulations Turdforge leftists, you got me.

Eh, I read a compelling article a while back about how most criminals are some level of retarded and how if you try to make them simulate empathy (asking them to write short stories about people that become increasingly complicated) their brains just can't handle it, like they don't have that kind of mental processing capacity...

But there's still enough going on upstairs that most of them don't pick fights they know they can't win. Most of the guys that beat their wives on a Friday night don't get into fistfights with their male coworkers Monday morning. They know how to control themselves, heavy metal poisoning or not. That's why I'm okay with punishing most of them.

Martin's character used laughing gas, this was just nitrogen, no oxygen. You give him nitrous oxide, and he'd laugh himself to death. Not something you want, what with there being witnesses and all. So, they just pumped nitrogen into his mask. Once they started the airflow, he'd have found himself breathing harder and harder, yet not getting any oxygen. You can breathe normally for a while like this, but pretty soon the autonomic system kicks in, and you begin to breathe even harder. Panic naturally sets in at this point and all you know is that you've got to get air. You will do anything to get air. Unless you've been in a situation where you've had something like that happen to you, you don't really understand it. You're not responding in a rational manner, in a situation like a fire or drowning, this can be deadly, as your panic can make things worse. You have to get air, and you don't worry about anything like making sure you're headed in the right direction, or away from danger. You just gasp and thrash with everything that you have to be able to breathe.

If they didn't give him a sedative before they put him on the table, then he would have gone through all of that in about the span of 4-minutes. At which point, he'd have blacked out, but still have been alive for several more minutes. His organs slowly failing one-by-one, until they gave out. At some point after that, they would have called his time of death.

We want our executions to look like a medical procedure, and not an actual execution because it makes it easier for us to pretend that it's not really murder. Because murders are done with things like guns or knives or are messy or painful. Not in something that looks like an operating room. There's actually a way to execute people that's quick, probably not terribly painful, not very bloody, and could be done in a clinical setting. A couple of them, actually. I'm not going to bother mentioning them because we gain nothing by doing so.

https://x.com/sollenbergerrc/status/1750738455267594602?s=46&t=iYW3foyqIA6Tn8VWwn3nwQ

The states that have approved nitrogen use are Alabama, Mississippi, and Oklahoma. Not surprising. This is the kind of dumb idea Ron DeSantis would latch on to.

and why is a 22 minute asphyxiation considered 'humane'? I think Robespierre was onto something by adopting the French Method

Same but with the caveat that even with treason I am against it for civilians.

Only current or former military should be executed for treason.

Joe Smith didn’t choose to be born here or write the Constitution so if he attacks it I will oppose him but to me it isn’t the same as when someone who has raised their hand and sworn an oath to support and defend the Constitution turns on it.

I'm sure someone will come up with a Flynnsy defense.

Remind me again, why we don't shoot people anymore? It's instant, and bullets are cheap.

California is in the process of emptying its death row an integrating the inmates with the rest of the statewide prison population. It turns out it works fine because death row inmates are indistinguishable from non-death row inmates who committed the same crime. Makes you wonder how some ended up on death row and the others just there for life...

Because the Russkies do it, so commie.
Same reason "under God" has to be in the pledge.

My hot creepy coworker spent most of Tuesday talking about how quick and peaceful being choked to death can be if done right, since you pass out so quickly. I gave her preemptive permission to euthanize me like that if I ever get a terminal illness. "Just tell me you wanna have kinky sex in the supply closet, I'll believe you because I'll have forgotten about this conversation."

Because you can’t take that back.

Nor the poisons

Nor the electric chair.

If history and psychology has taught us nothing, its that the courts cannot be trusted to firmly place blame and punishment on the guilty party.

No no, none of that. The death penalty will be around, that won't realistically change. But executing people with nitrogen? I'm not really down with making people suffer for 20+ minutes, if that's what's actually happening.

If you're going to claim the right to execute people, have the cojones to do it properly.

Oh, I’ve got a meme appropriate for this occasion but posting it might draw unwanted attention.

Let’s just say it involves Dealey Plaza and an…orange…in an open-topped automobile.

This is what drives me crazy about the shelter system.

We had a murder at work just before new year's... one of the refugees shanked one of the "domestic" homeless. No idea why and I'm not gonna speculate other than we have 300 people sleeping in the open in six dorms.

I'm supposed to be trying to help these folks get back on the path-y'know, with a job and a roof over their heads-but we offer them conditions that refugee camps or prisons would be investigated for, traumatizing them further by institutionalizing them.

The fact that despite everything, that’s the job you choose to do, says a lot about you. You seem like a decent caring person willing to give up luxuries so someone else can have their necessities. You really are a lot like UA in many ways. You both just choose to express those ideals in vastly different ways.

Thanks <3

Yeah, once upon a time there were some categorical qualities we could've been buds over-although I'd hasten to add that he'd be more like me 'cause I'm older.

lol. Ok. I’ll give you that.

Overall I'm against the death penalty. Too many chances for bias, mistakes, and unintended consequences, though putting someone on death row for 20 years also strikes me as cruel and unusual punishment. So better let it lie.

Once in a while though - there was a teenager who went on a murder spree in his high school. He was caught in the act of the shooting, he freely admits he did it, and at his house copious amounts of plans were found that were the exact manner in which he committed the massacre of his classmates. He said he didn't want to turn the gun on himself because he wanted to watch his victim's suffering as they died.

He also is clearly a born sociopath and witnesses said he started talking about wanting to see his classmates die when he was six years old.

A bunch of liberals I know IRL were lamenting that he faced life in prison without parole. When I disagreed one said that they don't expect him to ever get out, but the concept of life imprisonment is too much no matter what the crime. Another girl I know went further and said that locking this young man up for life for his awful crimes is the exact same evil as him shooting his classmates.

I've come to the conclusion that substantial portions of the left wing have gong batshit insane. Sorry, no, punishing people that are 100% guilty is not the same thing as going on a murder spree to enjoy watching the suffering of your victims as they die.

Depends on the quality of the prison.
We talking Shawshank?
Maybe your liberal pals think all prisons are Shawshank.

Ok. So, here’s another reason all you assholes can call me nuts. But, I’ve always had this morbid curiosity about serial killers. Not the crime so much as the psychology of why. Interviews with the notorious serial killers who have been caught, were not necessarily “born” that way. Then again, most serial killers do have siblings and the siblings, in those same childhood environments didn’t become serial killers. It really is a fascinting subject.

As for liberals lamenting about life in prison without parole …. Sure, it’s possible to have sympathy for a murderer if you look at the psychological trauma of their childhood. Not that most liberals excuse it, we just can empathize. Most serial killers who have been captured want the death penalty, that’s why they allowed themselves to be caught. But, in doing so, or in exchange for psychological information, they are sentenced to life without parole - forcing them to live every day of the rest of their life knowing what they did and the trauma they endured that turned them that way.

There is no easy way around this. It is a difficult question. Not all liberals are anti-capital punishment, not all conservatives are pro-capital punishment.