Nine months after Kenneth Smithā€™s botched lethal injection, state attorney general has asked for approval to kill him with nitrogen

  • PostmodernPythia@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Yes. Itā€™s true that every technology was once experimental. But how experiments are done is important. And I certainly hope weā€™ve moved forward morally since we started executing people. Weā€™re supposed to learn from our mistakes, not use them to justify future ones.

    • derf82@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The prisoner volunteered. Iā€™m not sure what better circumstances we could get.

      I really think death penalty opponents just donā€™t want to break the seal. Right now the idea that itā€™s ā€œexperimentalā€ is the only argument against it. Prove it works, and it will quickly become the go-to method.

      Opposition got their biggest victory when they got drug companies to stop providing the traditional 3 drug cocktail that has worked for decades. Now they argue every other method is either cruel and unusual (new drugs or older methods) our too experimental (inert gas asphyxiation or opioid overdose) when those latter methods are likely far more humane and much harder to stop up the supply.