An Alabama inmate would be the test subject for the “experimental” execution method of nitrogen hypoxia, his lawyers argued, as they asked judges to deny the state’s request to carry out his death sentence using the new method.
In a Friday court filing, attorneys for Kenneth Eugene Smith asked the Alabama Supreme Court to reject the state attorney general’s request to set an execution date for Smith using the proposed new execution method. Nitrogen gas is authorized as an execution method in three states but it has never been used to put an inmate to death.
Smith’s attorneys argued the state has disclosed little information about how nitrogen executions would work, releasing only a redacted copy of the proposed protocol.
Removal being life in prison? I think that’s whay you meant, so let me know if i misread thay.
That’s not what I think justice is because prison is about reform and not punishment. If you’re punishing them, okay, then that’s a whole other topic. But if your intent is to reform, and they’re too old to serve the sentence designed for reform or they’re deemed mentally unfit to be capable of reforming (usually in the case of extremely violent but low intelligent individuals), then the existing prison system we have in the US would be cruel to just cage someone who can’t change. The conditions US prisoners endure, especially when it comes to inmates on death row, is abysmal. Giving them the opportunity to take their own life without pain or suffering is my main “preference”, allowing death row inmates to just sit and rot in those conditions sounds worse than death. Of course, I’d leave that opinion up to the inmates though.
I’m in full agreement that laws are not 100% fairly and correctly applied, so my preference would be to allow painless suicide as “time served” for death row. Stay as long as you think you’re innocent, and hopefully we fix the conditions so they don’t want to take their life regardless of innocence due to the psychological damage they might receive.