Assume that capital punishment is morally justifiable; lethal injection is not a good method. I ran across an article years ago that suggested another method: nitrogen asphyxiation. You can find the article easily online; just search for

"Killing with kindness - capital punishment by nitrogen asphyxiation"
National Review, Sept 11, 1995 by Stuart A. Creque

If what Creque has suggested is true, then nitrogen asphyxiation probably ought to be the only method used for capital punishment. Just use a small room with a couch and silently pump out the oxygen, replacing it with nitrogen. The condemned person would just fall asleep and die peacefully, without anything unusually fearful or painful.

Does anyone know about this? Is Creque right?

Sounds good to me. The thing is that there is not "nice" death. I read a book a good ten years ago by a doctor, called "How We Die." It explains that death at its best is not pretty. The body struggles in its last throes, there is all sorts of pain as the organs are deprived of oxygen, and things get ugly.

The "pain" associated with the death penalty is the least of my worries. Same with the hardcore anti-death penalty advocates. They're just using this as legal leverage to end the whole shebang.

I am against the Death Penalty because it is way to imperfectly applied. Too many innocents are killed. And I also have the concern about giving the state so much power.

The concept of killing a known murderer is just fine with me morally however. But we're just way to imperfect in applying it in a way that makes the morality of killing murderers worth the immorality of killing innocents.

Another method would be regular old carbon monoxide. Musician Jerry Hunt, suffering from cancer, decided to end his life with Carbon Monoxide after doing much research into his options. He documented his method here:

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I don't think the death penalty is effective as a deterrent and studies show the legal costs for mandatory appeals end up being greater than keeping the prison alive and incarcerated. But assuming we are going to kill prisoners, why not take a look at the methods that terminally ill people use to end their lives peacefully? Phenobarbital and a plastic bag, for instance.

Though it would never go over politically, I cannot imagine a faster or more painless way of dying than be put under anesthesia and having someone put a shotgun in my mouth and blow out my medulla oblongata.

Jay,

I have not read the article but worked around reative and non-reactive gases for about twenty years. Having had a close call with nitrogen and argon supplies, there is no doubt these gases do not support life. Gas chambers used chorline gas and cyanide. I also worked in a Southen shipyard in the 70s where five welders died in a ship's hull because someone did not turn the argon supply off. Two rescuers were also lost after climbing down to investigate and assist.

Death may be deserved but to say it is ever kind I feel would be misleading. Kindness in this context could also be the use of another's mention of CO (carbon monoxide). However, wasn't this one of the Holocost methods of mass killing? What is really being advocated is a way to punish a convicted person through death without them feeling the consequences their victim(s) felt. Asphyxiation is a viable alternative and showing much greater mercy for acts that are sometimes incomprehensable in the brutality and heinous mindset in which they were committed.

As a nation we must have laws that protect and consequences for those that break these laws or willfully take life. Quick cocktails were a reasonable idea but was a act of economy rather than using the scientific knowledge available. A better way is available, even if past history's use is repulsive in application.

Hope this answers your question and a few others.

"Kindness in this context could also be the use of another's mention of CO (carbon monoxide). However, wasn't this one of the Holocost methods of mass killing? "

Yes and no. In the early days of the Final Solution, after the SS had concluded that execution by firing squad was too slow to accomplish the mission even when used on the Einsatzgruppen level (and was also emotionally hard on the executioners), Commandant Hoess of Treblinka did experiment with carbon monoxide as a lethal gas. As with the euthanasia movement, the theory was that the victims would drift off to sleep and never wake up, without being aware that they were being gassed. Practice turned out to be very different from theory, however.

First they tried gas vans, in which the exhaust from the engine was pumped into the "passenger compartment" of the truck. That didn't work as well as they hoped. The next step was to try using a vehicle hooked up to a gas chamber, still pumping the exhaust into the chamber.

In both cases the Jews ended up dead, but they did not go quietly into that good night. They panicked and tried to claw their way out - and once in awhile one of them would survive the experience. Can't have that.

Hoess reported to Berlin that asphyxia by carbon monoxide was not effective (as well as a waste of fuel the Nazis did not have to waste) and another method would have to be found. As we all know, that method was Zyklon B prussic acid (cyanide) gas originally meant for delousing clothing in quantity, used in purpose-build gas chambers that were allegedly showers.

The Nazis' problem with carbon monoxide, of course, was that engine exhaust is not pure CO, which is odorless and tasteless. You can't make engine exhaust smell like anything else; it has all sorts of combustion products in it. Had they incorporated separation and accumulator machines similar to the exhaust-gas scrubbers used on modern oil tankers to inert the cargo tanks to prevent fire and explosion into their power plants to accumulate and bottle pure carbon monoxide for use in the camps, it might have been another story. We might have read of gas chamber barracks instead of gas showers in the history books, for example.

I'm not saying that carbon monoxide won't kill people dead without their waking up after they pass out from anoxia. What I am saying is that it is not as practical as the use of nitrogen would be. And it's much easier to separate oxygen from air than to isolate carbon monoxide from exhaust gas.

Thanks for the insight, everyone.

JayF:

Does anyone know about this? Is Creque right?

I'm Stuart Creque. According to a source I asked at the time I wrote the article, a professor at Stanford University School of Medicine (and no, I unfortunately don't recall his name off the top of my head), the article is accurate. His experience included duty as a flight surgeon for the U.S. Air Force, so he was familiar with the perceptual symptoms of hypoxia.

Further, you can do a few Google searches on nitrogen aspyxiation as a cause of death in industrial accidents to prove to yourself that the method is completely painless. Sadly, several workers die each year from entering a closed area in which the regular air has been displaced by nitrogen or another biologically inert gas (methane in manure pits is another similar hazard). They literally don't know what hit them -- they simply pass out and, if not immediately rescued, they die.

The whole point is simply this: if we can find a method of execution that is painless and dignified, then we can move on to debating the fundamental question of whether capital punishment in itself is something our society should continue to practice.