Alabama is set to perform the second-ever nitrogen gas execution in the United States on Thursday.
Alan Eugene Miller, 59, was sentenced to death for the 1999 murders of his then-coworkers Lee Holdbrooks and Christoper Scott Yancy, and his former supervisor Terry Lee Jarvis.
Miller was to be executed in September 2022 via lethal injection, but it was called off after officials had trouble inserting an intravenous line to administer the fatal drugs and were concerned they would not be able to do so before the death warrant expired.
You know CO (carbon monoxide) is treated just like oxygen by the body but the brain doesn’t realize it’s not getting the oxygen you just pass out. It’s the reason why people die by accident, the body just breaths like normal.
Same thing for nitrogen, or any gas besides CO2. The human body has no way to detect oxygen. It can only detect CO2.
Not relevant to the argument at hand, but the body does have low O2 detection. I’ve held my breath with a pulse oximeter on before, and while high CO2 makes you panic, when you get to about 87% your body has a response I would describe as “breathe, mother fucker” which is hard to ignore. COPD patients often regulate using this hypoxic drive.
“Murder” is an illegal killing. This is not an illegal killing. It’s also not an immoral killing, but that’s a separate conversation.
It’s also not an immoral killing, but that’s a separate conversation.
Actually, let’s have that conversation.
I have two questions for you:
- Do you believe it can ever be moral to take an innocent person’s life?
- Do you believe that our judicial system has never wrongly convicted an innocent person and sentenced them to death?
If the answer to those questions is no, then I do not understand how you could ever say the death penalty can be moral.
If you answered yes to the first, you’re a monster. If you answered yes to the second, you’re hopelessly naive.
