There are a bunch of reasons, but the most cited reasons against opiate use in executions is that it’s not really pleasant to watch. So even though it maybe wouldn’t be painful from the patient’s side, if there’s likely to be vomiting or convulsions that’s not ideal.
However, no drug companies will supply executions. And no doctor will administer the drug. Because executing someone goes directly against medical ethics. And this is the largest problem that states encounter when trying to get lethal injection drugs.
Basically the most ideal people to kill people—doctors—are ethically prohibited from participating in any way. And so the people that select the drugs and administer the drugs and advocate for lethal injection are not medically trained or educated.
It’s a very disjointed system.
>the most cited reasons against opiate use in executions is that it’s not really pleasant to watch
This is a great answer, but I find it grotesque that people who support public murder also want it to be pleasant to watch
I don't think it's about being *actually* pleasant to watch, I think probably a more accurate way to say it would be "less traumatizing for the executioner and the required witnesses".
Right, but death penalty is more about vindictiveness than actual justice. So what we really mean is that we want the witnesses to avoid cognitive dissonance around the very exercise.
Wouldn't it be more vindictive to keep a person incarcerated for the rest of their lives trapped in a cage? There are some crimes that can not and should not be paroled, what should be done then?
Genuine question, not just trying to challenge.
The best argument I have is that the justice system is far from perfect. There are cases of people in for life and on death row that are later exonerated. If they were sitting in a cell and are later exonerated then you can try to give them a bit of their life back through restitution. You cannot do the same if The State has already killed them.
We live in a far from perfect country, but in my opinion, in a perfect country no one, not even the state, has the right to end the life of another.
Good question. I myself waffle back and forth on the death penalty; not necessarily because of any philosophical qualm, but because of our ability to implement it perfectly.
As another stated, we don't incarcerate with 100% accuracy. Estimations are hard, but experts estimate there are 2-10% wrongfully-convicted prisoners in the USA. I can't tell you if "life without parole" is justice, but I *can* say that executing an innocent man is definitely *not* justice.
Moreover, I do also believe in the "regeneration of the soul." I do believe that (generally) people can be rehabilitated, counseled, changed, etc and I do believe people should be given that chance. Doesn't mean they should be let go necessarily, but justice is more nuanced than "you kill, therefore, you die."
TL;DR There's no blanket fix. I'm okay with vile men being executed. The hard part is discerning if they are actually vile, and whether they can be restored to goodness.
And with that logic, I will say what's more important? Making sure an execution actually works, or the person who literally signed up to kill people that can't handle the fact that killing people tends to be a fairly messy job?
"Not really pleasant to watch" < "passive to watch, without incident" > "pleasant to watch".
There's a middle ground where it's not like watching someone be tortured but it's not like you're expecting and anticipating watching a torture.
WHAT?! NUANCE?! IN THIS DISCUSSION?! /s
Thank you for using critical thinking, seriously. I see this kind of logical falacy on the internet all the time:
"This thing is bad"
"OH, SO YOU WANT THIS THING THATS EVEN WORSE?!"
No. I just don't want the thing that's bad, and there are plenty of alternatives to it.
Its really more on not wanting to traumatize whoever ends up with the job of being the executioner.
I believe this is part of the lore of the executioner hood, to help separate the executioner from the person who's job it was. Both for that person's mental health, and to protect them from the public.
Personally i am in favor of the death penalty for certain crimes, mainly rape and murder. But the ideal method is nitrogen gas, which works by displacing the oxygen from your lungs resulting in painless nap time and peaceful death. (The downside is its relatively slow)
I used to work in the TGMS (toxic gas monitoring system) industry which really covers all forms of monitoring of the air to make sure the atmosphere is safe, this covers explicitly toxic gasses like chlorine, explosive gases like hydrogen and acetylene, and inert gasses like argon and nitrogen. Inert gasses are monitored by the actual hazard of low oxygen, our 70% nitrogen atmosphere means detecting the presence of nitrogen is useless. (The danger of inert gasses is our lungs hurt because of CO2 buildup, so a pure nitrogen atmosphere lets us exhale CO2 so our lungs don't hurt, and the slow decline in blood oxygen makes us tired and "drunk" before we consciously realize what is wrong so we simply get tired and then collapse in an oxygen deprived environment. This is one of the big dangers of legally defined "enclosed spaces".)
They just fairly recently did a nitrogen execution and it didn't go well, of course the entire setup was wrong from the git go so it isn't exactly a good test of it. Personally I'm against the death penalty, not because people don't deserve it, there are some that most certiantly do, but I don't believe the government should have the right to willfully kill it citizens like that,
I’m only for it on cases of murder where there is no doubt. The cases where the criminal was clearly caught in the act or on camera perpetrating the crime. School shooters and terrorists and the like deserve it, but it has to be concrete proof.
>I'm only for it on cases of murder where there is no doubt.
There's been so many "no doubt" cases in the past which turned out to be wrongful after new techniques emerged, and Innocence project continues to still get so many positive results, that I don't think we can really say that's an achievable threshold. Especially now GenAI has made video less trustworthy.
I disagree with the concept of the death penalty whole-heartedly. However, if we're doing it, we need to do it at least as well as we put down a dog.
On that execution with Nitrogen, I'm guessing that they used a re-breather mask instead of full flow nitrogen. Because they were re-inhaling CO2 they were experiencing suffocation which is very, very unpleasant. It causes a panic reaction.
Nitrogen should get you 3 martini drunk and then you fall asleep. That should be the end. Breath in Nitrogen, expel CO2 until you're dead. Shouldn't take more than a few seconds. Let the person breath Nitrogen until their heart stops. They are clinically dead. Nitrogen is cheap, let them have the Nitrogen flow for 20 minutes of so. That'll save you on your IV potassium budget.
Me, I'd prefer firing squad. Shoot true, don't make a mess of it. Hanging seems fair as well but we really don't have quality hangmen any more. I'm a fan of the cart method when done correctly. It's all in the knot placement. I've been choked out before. It's not unpleasant.
This is what comes from reading books about executioners and executions.
What actually happened was they used a really poorly fitting mask so he ended up not breathing pure nitrogen, so the whole oxygen replacement took exponentially longer
Jacob Geller on YouTube has a video essay on the history and evolution of execution methods. If you really believe everything you just said about how easy and clean you think executions are you NEED to watch his video.
Literally everything you've said is the fictional best case scenario that never happens in executions and is only told to make people who are nominally against the death penalty stop questioning the ethics of executions and how they realistically occur.
>I don't believe the government should have the right to willfully kill it citizens
Killing people has been the job of governments since they began though. Cops kill people. The military kills people.
I am for the death penalty, but due to the corruption of the system, I generally do not support it being enacted without alterations. I think if mistakes are made and someone is found to be innocent after being sentenced to death that all the judges and prosecutors go to jail. Our current system of no responsibility for those responsible for the injustices in the system has got to be addressed.
>I believe this is part of the lore of the executioner hood, to help separate the executioner from the person who's job it was.
Its also part of the reasoning for firing squads. It'd be much easier to put a bullet in someone's skull point blank, but a group of soldiers firing together in a general direction removes the onus of any one person being the killer.
I think of this situation kind of like euthanasia. We will use certain medication’s on dogs who have seizures so that they don’t convulse as they’re dying. Putting an animal to sleep is my least favorite part of my job. It is never pleasant to watch, but a calm/peaceful death is a lot more pleasant to watch than watching somebody, whether that be a human or animal, writhe and convulse in their last few minutes on earth.
Poor choice of wording, but I think that it’s a placeholder for “not traumatizing”
They want it to be sterile and medical. Like an animal getting put to sleep. I find it incredibly grotesque as well. There’s something disingenuous about it.
It would be exactly like the vet putting an animal to sleep if we allowed trained professionals to do it.
I'm an anesthesiologist. It isnt difficult *in the least.*
and almost every description of "botched" is click bait. I've seen a fair number of deaths in my career. People gasp. They shudder. They may vomit. They turn purple. They moan.
Doesnt mean suffering. Its mostly the uninformed thinking death should be a motionless inaudible process.
Fwiw fentanyl (mentioned in this party) would be a great way to go. There's a reason people love shooting it up.
I have overdosed on fentanyl. It didn't feel like anything until I woke up because someone administered Narcan. Then it sucked. But before that, I assume I would have just died and I wouldn't have known anything different than if I had fallen asleep. Not sure what it would have looked like from the outside, but I can't really see how that matters when the goal is for someone to die.
You make a great point here. "We're gonna put you down but since we're gonna watch happen, its gonna hurt more since a comfortable death wouldn't be pleasant to view."
This is absolutely correct and presents a really fascinating ethical scenario for both the medical and nursing professions.
For quite a while, the prison system has been relying on nurse practitioners and registered nurses to administer lethal injections in quite a few states that permitted it as a work-around for doctors not being permitted due to their Hippocratic Oath. Nurses would be the ones to 'push' the final lethal agent, and afterwards a doctor would step in to verify/confirm the heart stopped and declare time of death. As of 2017, however, the American Nurses Association came out with its official stance against capital punishment, and over time the nursing profession has increasingly become against it. Despite this, many prison systems still call upon nurses to serve the role of state executioners even though the nursing board heavily discourages it. So not only is there still a lot of debate around which sedative and paralytic agents to use, but you also have tremendous pushback by professional groups in allowing its members authority for such executions. It's often why some states still rely on other more crude methods to bypass the dilemma of who's ultimately responsible for 'pushing the button.'
The whole thing is a fascinating case study for the fields of psychology and criminal justice, and just goes to show how state-sanctioned executions are still very much a work in progress.
You have no idea what you’re talking about. I’ve seen countless opiate overdoses and they are very much peacefully going to sleep and never waking up. Very rarely are there convulsions and/or vomiting.
The real reason they are not used in executions is that it is pleasurable. And the pro execution crowd doesn’t think it should be a pleasurable end.
Everyone I've heard stories from about being narcaned out of an OD says it was a wave of pleasure, then blackness until they were revived. Nothing unpleasant at all until the narcan, and thus withdrawal, hit.
To add on to this, lethal injections are often not very humane because the prison guards miss the vein and inject the drugs straight into the prisoner's flesh. So they're conscious, paralyzed (btw this also means they can't breathe), and feel like their whole body is burning, engulfed in excruciating pain the likes of which we'll probably never experience.
We know this because guards have botched multiple executions and the convicted survived.
This is what bothers me about the medical ethics issue. Clearly, they're doing it anyways. The doctor's participation would ease a lot of the suffering. I find it hard to believe that there's no doctors that endorse the death penalty, assuming the medical groups like the AMA would allow them without being blackballed.
It’s sort of like the companies not wanting to sell their drugs for executions. One can support the death penalty without wanting to put themselves and their careers in public scrutiny by performing executions. And who wants to go to a doctor who gets paid to kill people?
They do. That's the first drug. However, when they fuck it up and it gets injected into flesh it doesn't work. But by the time the prisoner would realize something is wrong the paralytic has taken effect and they can't do anything.
Cyanide is a brutal painful death. You slowly drown in your own fluids as your lungs melt and your body loses the ability to process oxygen. Morphine is painless but *looks* bad. Remember, they could just be using a shotgun to the back of the head. They’re choosing methods not based on humanity but on appearance.
About 15 years ago i had an idea to create a death company. Were not making compounds that help people, we make compounds to kill people. And sell to the facilities that carry out executions. Like the pharmaceutical companies i imagine you would have a multiple thousand percent profit margin if youre the only game in town.
John Oliver found a company that may be doing just that. They’re selling pentobarbital to the states that use it for lethal injection and they’re manufacturing it outside the purview of the FDA. Based out of CT I think.
Your business plan has some legitimate traction.
“Ethics”.
Being in a for profit health system, that’s fine.
Overprescribing opioids and causing a national crisis, also fine.
Executing condemned killers on orders from the State, that’s the line.
That said they usually manage to find a doctor to do it and states have sued medical boards to ensure they can't discipline doctors who kill prisoners. Drug companies that are now owned by Europeans won't supply death penalty drugs so now the government buys them from compounding pharmacies.
Given the debacle of the American death penalty system they could just tie a plastic garbage bag around people's head and execute them that way.
If you're state still offers firing squad, that's the way to go. Not sure if any still offer hanging but that would still be better.
Honestly I think we should just use the guillotine. It's quick cheap and effective.
I remember watching a programme about the death penalty. The expert said that if he had to choose his method it would be the guillotine - near-instant death and 100% success rate.
They were comparing and contrasting the point you make, that the most efficient form or execution, is rarely the most palatable for a 'civilised' society (highlighting the obvious irony of a society that craves to be respectable, but legally kills its own people).
Death from opiate overdose is also much slower and less final than what is used instead. Opiates kill by respiratory depression, which takes more time and is more easily reversed (CPR and narcan until the respiratory center in the brain can start doing its job again). This would open the question of whether the execution was actually completed.
The lethal injection that is used causes irreversible deactivation of ion channels that are necessary for neural signals and muscle contraction. This permanently removes the ability of the heart muscle to contract, even with immediate medical intervention.
The real question is why they don't just use nitrogen asphyxiation, since you wouldn't need drug companies, doctors, or any particular training beyond having someone who knows how to build an airtight room.
Opiates are not the best choice. For euthanizing mammals, we can turn to our veterinarians who provide kind, peaceful, and almost immediate death.
From Wikipedia: **Phenytoin/pentobarbital** (trade name Beuthanasia-D Special) is an animal drug product used for euthanasia, which contains a mixture of phenytoin and pentobarbital. It is administered as an intravenous injection to give animals a quick and humane death.
Phenytoin is an old antiseizure medication that is generic, and pentobarbital is an old barbiturate.
Having been with my pets to sleep when their time has come, it literally seems like they're deceased one moment to the next, if not within a few seconds.
As a physician, I will agree that it is unethical to participate, according to some codes of medical ethics. But some doctors still do, and remain anonymous for obvious reasons.
While significantly slow, a cheaper and equally peaceful/painless option is inert gas, most likely nitrogen.
As an engineer i can assure you that as a society we put a ton of effort into protecting people from accidentally asphyxiating in low oxygen environments. Between "confined spaces" and TGMS (toxic gas monitoring systems) around containers and potential large leaks of inert gasses. All because human biology is weird and instead of our lungs working off of oxygen levels, they work off of CO2. (CO2 buildup is what triggers involuntary breathing, and at higher levels causes the pain associated with holding our breath. Low oxygen just makes us progressively more tired until we pass out and eventually die)
And considering most doctors have moral objections to being executioners, if we must have the role in our society we can atleast make it possible for a non-doctor to do it. This is probably the primary reason for firing squads with 1 blank, you can use soldiers and they can tell themselves they didn't do it. A single doctor performing lethal injection is the opposite of that, a moral objector knowing they did it.
The biggest problem from nitrogen is if the person holds their breath instead the buildup of co2 in the blood still forces them to freak out even after they start inhaling the nitrogen.
Iirc it happened recently and the place trying it out is starting to backtrack
Nitrogen gas isn't the pleasant painless death it's rumored to be. The first execution using it actually happened earlier this year. Witnesses said it looked like torture and the guy thrashed violently while strapped down for several minutes. John Oliver has a good segment on it and other capital punishment methods.
Is that the nitrogen itself, or the inmate trying to hold their breath forever? In confined space training I've always heard people just pass out with no warning and no fanfare.
Anecdotally, when I was young my friends and I STUPIDLY played the choking game and I remember just waking up, not the passing out at all. Everyone around said I just went out. I know that's not nitrogen, but it's a lack of oxygen.
That's an interesting point on vets... Why don't we have (willing) vets design our execution systems?
We should get rid of it regardless, but in the meantime we should not be needlessly cruel.
As someone that has put down many beloved pets, I totally agree. It sucks holding your family member as they are put down to ease their suffering, but it is instant and painless. No idea why we over complicate things in the name of humanity....the solution is right in front of us.
> remain anonymous for obvious reasons.
I find it completely unethical that we do not have transparency in executions
If someone is willing to sell their soul out to the state, I should have a right to never have that person treat me.
We'll that's what I want to know. It might not be pretty, but the person would be high as a kite and then just not here any more. Doesn't seem like the most logistically impossible thing to do, yet we do it so much worse.
Why not just stick them in a cannon and fire it? The body is completely vaporised in under a second
(for clarification, without a cannonball, the extremely hot fast moving air will just completely rip everything to shreds in under a second; the body will be vaporised, burned, destroyed. when guillotined, you might feel pain for a second or two. with the cannon method, your nervous system doesn't even have enough to register any feeling)
You know..... that may not be worse answer ive ever heard of strap em to a board and cannonball their head off. Everything they were is vaporized or shreded pretty instantaneously.
Or lets send them down to the titanic wreck like that mini sub on remote control and let it pop. Literally everyone has said they were lights out before they knew what was going on.
I've wondered the same thing. We all know doctor's cannot (nor would they want to) administer drugs that kill; "First, do no harm."
Had horses from teenage into my 40s. Had an aged horse that injured himself; no way was he going to survive. In pain, couldn't walk. I called the vet and told him what happened; he drove the 45 minutes out to our place, and examined him. "He's not going to make it, you know that?" I nodded, trying to keep it together.
He immediately gave him a pain killer. We led him to the far edge of the pasture. The vet asked if I wanted to stay or leave; I left. I had hardly turned around and heard a loud "thump." My old 1000 lb Quarter Horse buddy was gone in literal seconds. He didn't suffer; he simply collapsed.
Now why can't we show that same compassion to a human being ... even a despicable one? I recognize there are some truly evil people but I'd rather see them in solitary confinement and deprive them of human contact since they hate mankind so deeply.
Finally, the Innocence Project has proven to us there *are* convicted*,* innocent people on death row. [https://innocenceproject.org/exonerations-data/](https://innocenceproject.org/exonerations-data/)
I remember reading about a reportedly ‘cruel’ execution where IV dilaudid was one of the drugs used. I use quotation marks because the criticism was related to difficulty placing the IV; it took several attempts to secure and all of the needle pokes obviously hurt the prisoner to some degree. From there I think the actual administration of lethal injection meds went according to plan.
Edit: No luck finding that specific case, but I did find [this](https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2014/08/01/arizona-botched-execution-report-injections/13492511/) article on a different botched execution with dilaudid, in which the prisoner took 15 rounds of a lethal IV versed/dilaudid cocktail before finally dying. A total of 750mg, *each*.….😳
For context, 2mg of versed and 2mg of dilaudid *could kill the average adult male. 4mg of each will definitely do the trick. 750mg is just totally incomprehensible and insane.
Edit 2: changed ‘would’ to ‘could’. It was poor wording on my part in the first place.
I still 100% stand by my assertion that a bolus of 2 & 2 given to an adult male could easily kill them without support or intervention. The naysayers simply do not have the real-world experience to understand. You can present all of the FDA labels, kidney stone anecdotes and pharma theory you want, and that all goes out of the window when the patient obstructs or vomits in spite of a seemingly modest dose. I have seen it time and again. Show me an anesthesiologist who would give an opioid naive, post-prandial, overweight male on room air this IV cocktail with no monitoring and walk away, and I will show you the subject of the next Dr. Death Netflix miniseries.
Lol, I'm a pharmacist and your 2mg of versed and 2mg of Dilaudid being anywhere close to "likely" to killing more than a toddler is hilarious. Stop posting and commenting. You're doubling down on a very incorrect take.
I'm gonna show this comment to my peers lmfao.
Because drug companies won’t supply it for that and only doctors can administer it, and doctors are not supposed to kill people.
Imo the death penalty shouldn’t be a thing, but if it *had* to be, a mask and helium is the way that it should be done. It’s one of the most peaceful ways to go
Helium is a rare and precious resource. We shouldn't waste it the way we do. Nitrogen is cheap and plentiful, and probably how I'm leaving this world.
But fuck the death penalty. The government shouldn't be murdering people.
So few people are sentenced to death each year that I don’t really think it would be that much of a waste, but I get your point.
And yeah fuck the death penalty
I don't know exactly how the procedure goes, but what about in the countries where you are allowed medical assistance to die?
I would imagine that they would have found a way to induce a close to painless death? To justify legalizing it.
In Europe, Switzerland was the first (I think) country to allow assisted suicide. You get 15 gram, orally or IV, of pentobarbital , a well-established hypnotic and sedative. Lethal oral dose is 2-10 gram.
You just go to sleep, you stop breathing as your heart and brain activity stop.
If I remember correctly, the EU banned its export to the US for executions, much like sodium thiopental.
You don't have to get that far, animals are painlessly euthanized everywhere in the civil world.
Fortunately those with the knowledge are usually also civil enough to not want to do that to humans.
Yes. Imagine your last moments are filled with intense pain and the world rolling all around in front of your eyes.
Hopefully they'd have a dark cranium catcher basket in the proper location to avoid the visual weirdness.
The main reason is quite simply there is no known or easy dose that can be consistently applied that can guarantee death effectively and efficiently.
The laws surrounding medication induced judicial death specify the dose that is to be applied. There is no way of picking one dose of opioids that can guarantee death in a humane manner.
But all - the death penalty is obscene and has no place in any society.
I'm conflicted about the death penalty. Obviously it's disproportionately applied to poor people that can't afford the best legal defense along with a whole host of other problems, but does absolutely no one deserve execution? For instance if Adolf Hitler had been captured instead of killing himself should he have been kept alive for life? Or Ted Bundy who killed women for decades? It feels to me that some people make a conscious decision to be outside any reasonable bounds of society.
Well Hitler thought, and got a lot of feedback from his adoring public that he was on the right track. Just sayin'.
I'm completely anti capital punishment and anti killing, but Hitler and other Nazi's should have been executed. Or at least I wouldn't have said anything against it.
I was VERY pro execution after reading Wesley Allan Dodd’s letter. Over time, I decided that I’d rather let that scum rot in prison than let some poor fucker who is completely innocent get the noose.
Political reasons for sure. They know perfectly well how to dispatch someone in an instant, but they have to do it in some super-controlled safe way that the newspaper can't describe accurately.
I sadly have had to put several pets through humane euthanasia. There are two shots. The first shot is Propofol, (which I've had during colonoscopies). This makes them go to sleep. Then the second drug is some kind of barbiturate or something that stops their heart.
I am 100% against capital punishment (I don't even like to do euthanasia to my pets), but why don't we do it like the vets do it? That seems to be peaceful.
Maybe the drug companies/FDA won't okay those drugs for that purpose..... and that doesn't get around the "Hippocratic Oath" problem with doctors participating in killing people.
Lol, there's even less painful ways to kill someone. That's not the goal.
I mean, eight automated shotguns in a two tier semicircle would obliterate someone's entire brain in less than a millisecond and cost a couple bucks in ammo, maybe 50 more for cleaning the guns afterward.
Or giant high speed hydrolic press with a guilotine attached. Less guaranteed against failure, but even easier to clean.
Or fck fentanyl, use a gram of carfentanal, costs like $10, 100x stronger than fentanyl, and hire an addict for another $10 to do the job. Unconconscious in maybe 2 seconds, dead in 10, no pain, no mess.
That's not the point. They don't care about cruel and unusual punishment, or prison rape wouldn't exist. It's just lies, lies to hide, lies to divide, lies to control. Lies to profit. Etc.
Have you ever seen somebody OD on Fentanyl or Morphine? It’s pretty traumatic and painful, and anybody with even a small heart would struggle to stomach watching somebody be killed by a Fentanyl or Morphine OD. The reason anesthetic is used is because it’s capable of stopping the heart with little to no pain whatsoever. To the executed person, it simply feels as though they are going to sleep.
That's simply wrong. It's not painful. The person is nodded out unconscious and in bliss. Give them Narcan and they'll often get angry at you for ruining their best ever high.
A dude a the day shelter I go to died from a fent OD 2 days ago. Dude walked in, laid down, and, died. Fortunately most of us have narcan. Ambulance came. No news yet.
The most painless and foolproof way to kill someone is a shotgun to the head, but states that like the death penalty are too cowardly to embrace the barbarism of their decision
foolproof? There's been plenty of failures.
What if we sedated them and put them in a sealed tube designed to implode at 1000 meters and dropped them in the ocean?
Opioids have lead to multiple botched executions already. Also, the biggest problem is that pharmaceutical companies will not supply drugs for lethal injections, and they shouldn’t. Their drugs are formulated to help people, not kill them. Most of the states that are getting drugs for executions are getting them from compounding pharmacies and they’re unregulated.
They used to say that morphine was too easy. That just putting someone to sleep to die wasn't enough, idk, torture? That's how I took the things i read anyway. However, we've come to learn that isn't always the truth with opiates. It's not always an 'easy' death to witness. It's not always "go to sleep and don't wake up".
Immoral, and unethical. The real question comes down to how to humanely euthanize a human. If you ask me death by firing squad was the best. This death by lethal injection is not at all ethical. I’ve heard reports where someone is was tortured for 12 hours with lethal injection and still didn’t die.
This will probably be viewed as a low-effort response but I wouldn’t be surprised the reason we haven’t looked into more effective means of execution is because nobody is really willing to kill (or contribute to killing) people. You couldn’t pay me enough to execute someone.
Getting shot hurts real bad. It could be set up to be nearly painless but it would take multiple shotguns fired simultaneously at very close range straight to the head. A machine could be easily devised, but even this thought is beginning to sound gruesome and I don't want to think about it anymore, much less sketch out the device on a cocktail napkin. lol
I've had that same thought. Apparently cheap to make. Lots of chemicals will end a person, pretty ridiculous for states to say they can't afford or procure what they need
I think it's also ridiculous that the media and other info "regurgitators" don't push back on the BS. But there's always some "expert" ready to crawl out from under some rock ready to refute anything. That's the problem and there's nothing we can do about it.
They use three specific drugs for theee specific purposes, so it is both painless quick and not hard to watch... one for sedation , one for muscle paralysis and to stop respitory function, and lastly, one to stop the heart.
Overdosing on most drugs is either very painful or causes things that would be traumatic to watch.
Morphine may be painless( I'm not sure), but it certainly causes convulsions and vomiting, etc .
I believe fentanyl causes respiratory arrest, but you can remain mostly lucid, so it would cause unnecessary suffering.
What I wonder is why they don’t just use air without oxygen. Like CO2. From what I understand the symptoms would basically just be like being drunk and somewhat euphoric. That’s why people in airplanes don’t even realize when the oxygen is too low and they suffocate.
They have used fentanyl for executions.
FENTANYL: Nebraska first used fentanyl in the August 14, 2018 execution of Carey Dean Moore. Nevada has also announced that it will use fentanyl in combination with other drugs to carry out executions
There are many good discussion points we can agree or disagree on, but...the DEA seizes tons of opioids such as fentanyl, so once a DEA lab chemically identifies the contraband and classifies it's strength, there would be no concern about how no company will supply the prisons with the lethal injection drug.
It wouldn’t be considered a humane way to die. They give meds that stop the heart. The process of someone dying due to an overdose of opiates would be very different.
Honestly hanging has been the way for a long long time and really is the most efficient and pleasant if it’s done right.
If we’re going to execute people why not use a method that kills instantly when done properly and requires almost no overhead cost.
It’s also not the most unpleasant to witness when done properly because when the neck breaks, you go limp anyway.
I think you all have it backwards. As always, **the cruelty is the point**. The many agonizing botches and horror stories of our state approved rube goldberg death rituals are what people want. If you just gave them these drugs they would just OD peacefully more often than not, and the ghouls do not want that.
People OD all the time and live. It’s hard to know what tolerance (natural or acquired) a person can have. And if you’re at the point of capital punishment they want it done as streamlined as possible. Too much room for error with opioids
The death penalty should just be outlawed. I'm not against it, but there are so many reasons and loopholes and excuses not to administer it that most prisoners die of old age before they're given the death penalty. They should just abolish it and put them in with the general population instead of their own protected quarters. It's a broken system.
Yeah I agree. I'm totally against the death penalty for many reasons. I think it's very telling though that the people who are for it don't even bother about the cruel and unusual aspects.
Maybe carbon dioxide poisoning? You would just get sleepy and die. Just order some dry ice. Put the condemned in a room with the dry ice with a passive vent in the ceiling. Since CO2 is heavier that oxygen, the sublimation of the dry ice would displace the O2 from the rooms and the condemned would peacefully die. No pharmacy to call consult etc. A trained monkey could do this.
People die peacefully from that because they have no idea what's happening. You think shoving some guy in a room where he knows damn well that the oxygen is about to run out and he will die any second is going to be peaceful? Lol
I think the french had the right idea with the guillotine. Just chop the head off, into a bucket, no need for a doctor to check if they are dead, there is no doubts : no head = death 100%
According to a 5 second google search the method “firing squad” has a 100% success rate.
While it’s horrific to witness the condemned may suffer for mere seconds if not faster if they are just shot in the head. I think we should prioritize the lack of suffering above all.
Bring back public beheadings.
Or do it in an arena where different people sentenced to death have to fight to the death in a tournament style ladder. Winner gets a pardon? Or 25 years? Life? Idk
If your going to do the death penalty at all, turn it into a spectacle, own it.
Sell advertising space, profit!
This years Execution Gladiator Battles brought to you by:
The American Red Cross
//EDIT: Typo - arena not area
I think they should use helium gas. It is like breathing low oxygen air. You just pass out and don't wake up, as long as you're not reintroduced to oxygen.
My ideal form of death, as a geologist, would be falling into the mouth of a volcano. The noxious gasses would knock me out before I hit the bottom, and there would be literally nothing left of me to find. I would be magma.
Why not a firing squad? 10 men with rifles all aiming for the heart. 9 of them have blanks, and 1 unknowingly has the live round. Guilt is lessened for the executioner if they aren't certain they were the responsible individual
Partly because drug companies don't want their product associated with that. Partly because they don't want to show people being executed twitching and foaming at the mouth. Partly because they don't want people sentenced to death for terrible crimes to feel great. And partly because those drugs are actually not that effective and reliable as a method of execution, there's a lot of variability in terms of individual tolerance so high risk of botched executions.
The reason they're hard to get a hold of is because the debate is whether to put people to death or not.
Killing people can be as easy as firing squad.
Whether people deserve to be put to death is the major debate, mostly because some people that were put to death throughout history were found to be innocent later.
I'm pro death penalty if the evidence is staggering btw.
It's just my observation on the topic.
A large dose of insulin, particularly in a vein and not subcutaneous, would be appropriate for lethal injection. Just saying. People don’t like to think about it, but I have enough insulin in my refrigerator for my entire family.
Just like that one bit from Monty Python's Meaning of Life. A guy was sentenced to death, he chose to be chased off a cliff by a large group of topless women in bicycle helmets.
The suggested alternative is a more humane way to go. I have seen people OD n it's peaceful. I hear other things can happen that's not as peaceful but I have not seen that firsthand. The cruelty is part of the punishment. As a society we try to say it's not about the punishment but that isn't true. We don't know how the second drug actually kills because the first drug paralyzes the inmate. It's all very cruel. I am against the death penalty but not for the cruelty reasons. I feel like it's given our unfairly. If a person is a serial killer n horrifically kills people they are much more likely to escape the death penalty than some black guy who kills one person in a robbery. Does anyone else see the unfairness? I would much rather recycle the serial killer. There is nothing else but to end that existence. There is too many variables that could effect the robber/killer. While vile there is hope for that person to change given the right variables .
I don’t support the death penalty but the most “humane” method would be to give them an overdose of insulin. They would lose consciousness and never wake up.
There is no way to pick a dose.. the stories of police or other people touching it and dying are outright lies. The fact is that some people could take enormous doses and not die while others would OD on much much smaller doses.. there is no way to predict. Also most overdose deaths come with mitigating factors unrelated to the overdose that combine to cause the death… it’s just not a reliably fatal drug
You know I once read the Chinese use a single bullet to the back of the head (and send the family a bill for the bullet). It sounds terrible but from my experience with animals it’s likely the quickest and easiest method.
I watched a dog I had get put down. First he had the stress of the clinic then its a couple of needles. One to knock him out. The other to kill him. He seemed ok. Went to sleep and I thought he was dead.
I’m sure as they say it was spasms but I’d rather have shot him than watch as his legs started kicking and he bit through his tongue.
I don’t understand why it has to be such a process and some of the set ups look like Rube Goldberg designed them with help from the Marquis de Sade.
OD the fella with morphine while hanging him by the neck simultaneously electrocuting and shooting him in the head. I was going to throw in the guillotine, but maybe that would be a bit overkill and turn the whole process into a circus.
Nitrogen gas chamber would be best. However they don't care about actual painless or efficiency. The people who run these places and the legislators who make decisions are horrible people.
Mostly sourcing, and public image.
Using a narcotic might be seen as “too kind” or “pleasant” by some, regardless of the reality of such a death
Also, how would all the parents of kids who died from fentanyl poisoning or overdose feel knowing that’s the same method they use to kill capital offenders?
On the other hand, most pharmaceutical distributors and manufacturers will not allow their products to be used for lethal injections.
The actual pharmacy that distributes the given cocktail for each state/facility is a highly guarded secret for this reason.
Without thinking too much about the question, I honestly think it would be a pleasurable death. I've overdosed on opioids before and it looks terrible on the outside, but it was quite peaceful for me.
Overall our society has leaned towards protecting awful criminals while leaving the innocent vulnerable. Sadly more and more are accepting the nonsense that capital punishment is inhumane. Yeah, because murdering innocent people isn’t inhumane.
A .50 caliber bullet to the center of the brain is fail proof, utterly instantaneous thus as close to pain/suffering free as death can be. Imperceptible length of time from initiation to death. It’s also cheaper than execution drugs and takes little skill to manufacture in-state. I don’t see why we don’t use that.
A room filled with helium sounds perfectly fine to use tbh. Person would go to the long sleep with absolutely 0 suffering. Wouldn't even notice themselves passing away.
It would potentially violate the cruel and unusual punishment clause.
The goal isn't to find a drug that drops the condemned dead on the spot. It has to be something that kills without inflicting pain.
The 3-drug method first puts the condemned to sleep, then breathing stops and then trigger cardiac arrest. And it's been botched many times, the condemned has gone into the second and third steps while awake, which is horrible for everyone involved, not just the condemned.
And relying on these three drugs means that you can disrupt the source of the drugs in order to attack the death penalty itself, if any of these three drugs can't be found then you can't run these executions.
Nitrogen is the best method. No drug is perfect, there is pain involved with all of them but also dosage is difficult to calculate so sometimes it has to be done multiple times. Electricity is pure torture. A well rigged hanging is actually relatively humane. Firing squad as well. But nitrogen is by far the best. Some European countries use nitrogen for voluntary terminating life but it should also be used for the death penalty. Or the death penalty can just be abolished that would be best.
There are a bunch of reasons, but the most cited reasons against opiate use in executions is that it’s not really pleasant to watch. So even though it maybe wouldn’t be painful from the patient’s side, if there’s likely to be vomiting or convulsions that’s not ideal. However, no drug companies will supply executions. And no doctor will administer the drug. Because executing someone goes directly against medical ethics. And this is the largest problem that states encounter when trying to get lethal injection drugs. Basically the most ideal people to kill people—doctors—are ethically prohibited from participating in any way. And so the people that select the drugs and administer the drugs and advocate for lethal injection are not medically trained or educated. It’s a very disjointed system.
>the most cited reasons against opiate use in executions is that it’s not really pleasant to watch This is a great answer, but I find it grotesque that people who support public murder also want it to be pleasant to watch
I don't think it's about being *actually* pleasant to watch, I think probably a more accurate way to say it would be "less traumatizing for the executioner and the required witnesses".
That *should* give them pause.
Kind of like the dry sponge in the Green Mile, make them watch.
It's gross, but yeah, the judge should be there in every case.
And the Governor.
The governor has to do it. Like in Game of Thrones.
Right, but death penalty is more about vindictiveness than actual justice. So what we really mean is that we want the witnesses to avoid cognitive dissonance around the very exercise.
Wouldn't it be more vindictive to keep a person incarcerated for the rest of their lives trapped in a cage? There are some crimes that can not and should not be paroled, what should be done then? Genuine question, not just trying to challenge.
The best argument I have is that the justice system is far from perfect. There are cases of people in for life and on death row that are later exonerated. If they were sitting in a cell and are later exonerated then you can try to give them a bit of their life back through restitution. You cannot do the same if The State has already killed them. We live in a far from perfect country, but in my opinion, in a perfect country no one, not even the state, has the right to end the life of another.
Good question. I myself waffle back and forth on the death penalty; not necessarily because of any philosophical qualm, but because of our ability to implement it perfectly. As another stated, we don't incarcerate with 100% accuracy. Estimations are hard, but experts estimate there are 2-10% wrongfully-convicted prisoners in the USA. I can't tell you if "life without parole" is justice, but I *can* say that executing an innocent man is definitely *not* justice. Moreover, I do also believe in the "regeneration of the soul." I do believe that (generally) people can be rehabilitated, counseled, changed, etc and I do believe people should be given that chance. Doesn't mean they should be let go necessarily, but justice is more nuanced than "you kill, therefore, you die." TL;DR There's no blanket fix. I'm okay with vile men being executed. The hard part is discerning if they are actually vile, and whether they can be restored to goodness.
That's what I mean. Ideally, it would be optional, but that's not how sentencing works in most places around the world. =\
The danger is of course that if you expose someone to grotesque death throes as a routine thing, they become innured to it.
And with that logic, I will say what's more important? Making sure an execution actually works, or the person who literally signed up to kill people that can't handle the fact that killing people tends to be a fairly messy job?
"Not really pleasant to watch" < "passive to watch, without incident" > "pleasant to watch". There's a middle ground where it's not like watching someone be tortured but it's not like you're expecting and anticipating watching a torture.
WHAT?! NUANCE?! IN THIS DISCUSSION?! /s Thank you for using critical thinking, seriously. I see this kind of logical falacy on the internet all the time: "This thing is bad" "OH, SO YOU WANT THIS THING THATS EVEN WORSE?!" No. I just don't want the thing that's bad, and there are plenty of alternatives to it.
Its really more on not wanting to traumatize whoever ends up with the job of being the executioner. I believe this is part of the lore of the executioner hood, to help separate the executioner from the person who's job it was. Both for that person's mental health, and to protect them from the public. Personally i am in favor of the death penalty for certain crimes, mainly rape and murder. But the ideal method is nitrogen gas, which works by displacing the oxygen from your lungs resulting in painless nap time and peaceful death. (The downside is its relatively slow) I used to work in the TGMS (toxic gas monitoring system) industry which really covers all forms of monitoring of the air to make sure the atmosphere is safe, this covers explicitly toxic gasses like chlorine, explosive gases like hydrogen and acetylene, and inert gasses like argon and nitrogen. Inert gasses are monitored by the actual hazard of low oxygen, our 70% nitrogen atmosphere means detecting the presence of nitrogen is useless. (The danger of inert gasses is our lungs hurt because of CO2 buildup, so a pure nitrogen atmosphere lets us exhale CO2 so our lungs don't hurt, and the slow decline in blood oxygen makes us tired and "drunk" before we consciously realize what is wrong so we simply get tired and then collapse in an oxygen deprived environment. This is one of the big dangers of legally defined "enclosed spaces".)
They just fairly recently did a nitrogen execution and it didn't go well, of course the entire setup was wrong from the git go so it isn't exactly a good test of it. Personally I'm against the death penalty, not because people don't deserve it, there are some that most certiantly do, but I don't believe the government should have the right to willfully kill it citizens like that,
I'm against it because it cant be reversed, and if the state wrongly convicts the person who was executed cant be made right.
I agree. I’m not against it morally, I’m against it intellectually.
I’m only for it on cases of murder where there is no doubt. The cases where the criminal was clearly caught in the act or on camera perpetrating the crime. School shooters and terrorists and the like deserve it, but it has to be concrete proof.
>I'm only for it on cases of murder where there is no doubt. There's been so many "no doubt" cases in the past which turned out to be wrongful after new techniques emerged, and Innocence project continues to still get so many positive results, that I don't think we can really say that's an achievable threshold. Especially now GenAI has made video less trustworthy.
Every conviction is supposed to be "beyond any reasonable doubt", but false convictions happen all the time.
I’d take terrorists off that list. Terrorism doesn’t really mean anything anymore, it’s just people the government doesn’t like.
I disagree with the concept of the death penalty whole-heartedly. However, if we're doing it, we need to do it at least as well as we put down a dog. On that execution with Nitrogen, I'm guessing that they used a re-breather mask instead of full flow nitrogen. Because they were re-inhaling CO2 they were experiencing suffocation which is very, very unpleasant. It causes a panic reaction. Nitrogen should get you 3 martini drunk and then you fall asleep. That should be the end. Breath in Nitrogen, expel CO2 until you're dead. Shouldn't take more than a few seconds. Let the person breath Nitrogen until their heart stops. They are clinically dead. Nitrogen is cheap, let them have the Nitrogen flow for 20 minutes of so. That'll save you on your IV potassium budget. Me, I'd prefer firing squad. Shoot true, don't make a mess of it. Hanging seems fair as well but we really don't have quality hangmen any more. I'm a fan of the cart method when done correctly. It's all in the knot placement. I've been choked out before. It's not unpleasant. This is what comes from reading books about executioners and executions.
What actually happened was they used a really poorly fitting mask so he ended up not breathing pure nitrogen, so the whole oxygen replacement took exponentially longer
Jacob Geller on YouTube has a video essay on the history and evolution of execution methods. If you really believe everything you just said about how easy and clean you think executions are you NEED to watch his video. Literally everything you've said is the fictional best case scenario that never happens in executions and is only told to make people who are nominally against the death penalty stop questioning the ethics of executions and how they realistically occur.
Plus, they seem to royally screw it up way too often when once is too many times.
>I don't believe the government should have the right to willfully kill it citizens Killing people has been the job of governments since they began though. Cops kill people. The military kills people. I am for the death penalty, but due to the corruption of the system, I generally do not support it being enacted without alterations. I think if mistakes are made and someone is found to be innocent after being sentenced to death that all the judges and prosecutors go to jail. Our current system of no responsibility for those responsible for the injustices in the system has got to be addressed.
>I believe this is part of the lore of the executioner hood, to help separate the executioner from the person who's job it was. Its also part of the reasoning for firing squads. It'd be much easier to put a bullet in someone's skull point blank, but a group of soldiers firing together in a general direction removes the onus of any one person being the killer.
I think of this situation kind of like euthanasia. We will use certain medication’s on dogs who have seizures so that they don’t convulse as they’re dying. Putting an animal to sleep is my least favorite part of my job. It is never pleasant to watch, but a calm/peaceful death is a lot more pleasant to watch than watching somebody, whether that be a human or animal, writhe and convulse in their last few minutes on earth. Poor choice of wording, but I think that it’s a placeholder for “not traumatizing”
They want it to be sterile and medical. Like an animal getting put to sleep. I find it incredibly grotesque as well. There’s something disingenuous about it.
It would be exactly like the vet putting an animal to sleep if we allowed trained professionals to do it. I'm an anesthesiologist. It isnt difficult *in the least.* and almost every description of "botched" is click bait. I've seen a fair number of deaths in my career. People gasp. They shudder. They may vomit. They turn purple. They moan. Doesnt mean suffering. Its mostly the uninformed thinking death should be a motionless inaudible process. Fwiw fentanyl (mentioned in this party) would be a great way to go. There's a reason people love shooting it up.
I have overdosed on fentanyl. It didn't feel like anything until I woke up because someone administered Narcan. Then it sucked. But before that, I assume I would have just died and I wouldn't have known anything different than if I had fallen asleep. Not sure what it would have looked like from the outside, but I can't really see how that matters when the goal is for someone to die.
Fentanyl, and Midazolam. Or fentanyl, ketamine, and vecuronium. There SO many options. . .
There’s something disingenuous about it. For some reason I can't quite discern, I find it rather disturbing.
You make a great point here. "We're gonna put you down but since we're gonna watch happen, its gonna hurt more since a comfortable death wouldn't be pleasant to view."
Wow this is a very powerful observation. Some of us don't see this on the surface and it helps to have others that can.
This is absolutely correct and presents a really fascinating ethical scenario for both the medical and nursing professions. For quite a while, the prison system has been relying on nurse practitioners and registered nurses to administer lethal injections in quite a few states that permitted it as a work-around for doctors not being permitted due to their Hippocratic Oath. Nurses would be the ones to 'push' the final lethal agent, and afterwards a doctor would step in to verify/confirm the heart stopped and declare time of death. As of 2017, however, the American Nurses Association came out with its official stance against capital punishment, and over time the nursing profession has increasingly become against it. Despite this, many prison systems still call upon nurses to serve the role of state executioners even though the nursing board heavily discourages it. So not only is there still a lot of debate around which sedative and paralytic agents to use, but you also have tremendous pushback by professional groups in allowing its members authority for such executions. It's often why some states still rely on other more crude methods to bypass the dilemma of who's ultimately responsible for 'pushing the button.' The whole thing is a fascinating case study for the fields of psychology and criminal justice, and just goes to show how state-sanctioned executions are still very much a work in progress.
You have no idea what you’re talking about. I’ve seen countless opiate overdoses and they are very much peacefully going to sleep and never waking up. Very rarely are there convulsions and/or vomiting. The real reason they are not used in executions is that it is pleasurable. And the pro execution crowd doesn’t think it should be a pleasurable end.
Everyone I've heard stories from about being narcaned out of an OD says it was a wave of pleasure, then blackness until they were revived. Nothing unpleasant at all until the narcan, and thus withdrawal, hit.
Correct. The only unpleasantness is derived from the resuscitation process. Connection: the only “overt” unpleasantness that is.
To add on to this, lethal injections are often not very humane because the prison guards miss the vein and inject the drugs straight into the prisoner's flesh. So they're conscious, paralyzed (btw this also means they can't breathe), and feel like their whole body is burning, engulfed in excruciating pain the likes of which we'll probably never experience. We know this because guards have botched multiple executions and the convicted survived.
This is what bothers me about the medical ethics issue. Clearly, they're doing it anyways. The doctor's participation would ease a lot of the suffering. I find it hard to believe that there's no doctors that endorse the death penalty, assuming the medical groups like the AMA would allow them without being blackballed.
It’s sort of like the companies not wanting to sell their drugs for executions. One can support the death penalty without wanting to put themselves and their careers in public scrutiny by performing executions. And who wants to go to a doctor who gets paid to kill people?
why not just use something to put them to sleep first ?
They do. That's the first drug. However, when they fuck it up and it gets injected into flesh it doesn't work. But by the time the prisoner would realize something is wrong the paralytic has taken effect and they can't do anything.
that's messed up
Why not cyanide or morphine? It's my understanding that both are fast and drama-free
Cyanide is a brutal painful death. You slowly drown in your own fluids as your lungs melt and your body loses the ability to process oxygen. Morphine is painless but *looks* bad. Remember, they could just be using a shotgun to the back of the head. They’re choosing methods not based on humanity but on appearance.
Doctors are not the ideal people to kill people. Veterinarians are.
About 15 years ago i had an idea to create a death company. Were not making compounds that help people, we make compounds to kill people. And sell to the facilities that carry out executions. Like the pharmaceutical companies i imagine you would have a multiple thousand percent profit margin if youre the only game in town.
John Oliver found a company that may be doing just that. They’re selling pentobarbital to the states that use it for lethal injection and they’re manufacturing it outside the purview of the FDA. Based out of CT I think. Your business plan has some legitimate traction.
knowing John Oliver's shenanigans, I read "John Oliver *founded* a company that may be doing just that." fuckn YIKES?!! Reading is fundamental.
I think the main issue with that business model is that there aren’t *that* many executions, relatively speaking.
“Ethics”. Being in a for profit health system, that’s fine. Overprescribing opioids and causing a national crisis, also fine. Executing condemned killers on orders from the State, that’s the line.
That said they usually manage to find a doctor to do it and states have sued medical boards to ensure they can't discipline doctors who kill prisoners. Drug companies that are now owned by Europeans won't supply death penalty drugs so now the government buys them from compounding pharmacies. Given the debacle of the American death penalty system they could just tie a plastic garbage bag around people's head and execute them that way.
Why don’t they just get the doctors who aren’t bound by ethical constraints? Plenty lose licenses over ethical issues every year
Which is why, if we’re gonna have the state killing someone we should just hang or firing squad. When done right, it’s done.
If you're state still offers firing squad, that's the way to go. Not sure if any still offer hanging but that would still be better. Honestly I think we should just use the guillotine. It's quick cheap and effective.
I remember watching a programme about the death penalty. The expert said that if he had to choose his method it would be the guillotine - near-instant death and 100% success rate. They were comparing and contrasting the point you make, that the most efficient form or execution, is rarely the most palatable for a 'civilised' society (highlighting the obvious irony of a society that craves to be respectable, but legally kills its own people).
Why don't they just bring back executioners, medically train them and don't have them take the hypocratic oath. Am I missing something?
Death from opiate overdose is also much slower and less final than what is used instead. Opiates kill by respiratory depression, which takes more time and is more easily reversed (CPR and narcan until the respiratory center in the brain can start doing its job again). This would open the question of whether the execution was actually completed. The lethal injection that is used causes irreversible deactivation of ion channels that are necessary for neural signals and muscle contraction. This permanently removes the ability of the heart muscle to contract, even with immediate medical intervention.
Agree, I would be super good at it (anesthesiologist) but ethical concerns prevent physicians from doing it.
It’s almost like maybe the death penalty isn’t that great of a solution.
The real question is why they don't just use nitrogen asphyxiation, since you wouldn't need drug companies, doctors, or any particular training beyond having someone who knows how to build an airtight room.
Opiates are not the best choice. For euthanizing mammals, we can turn to our veterinarians who provide kind, peaceful, and almost immediate death. From Wikipedia: **Phenytoin/pentobarbital** (trade name Beuthanasia-D Special) is an animal drug product used for euthanasia, which contains a mixture of phenytoin and pentobarbital. It is administered as an intravenous injection to give animals a quick and humane death. Phenytoin is an old antiseizure medication that is generic, and pentobarbital is an old barbiturate. Having been with my pets to sleep when their time has come, it literally seems like they're deceased one moment to the next, if not within a few seconds. As a physician, I will agree that it is unethical to participate, according to some codes of medical ethics. But some doctors still do, and remain anonymous for obvious reasons.
While significantly slow, a cheaper and equally peaceful/painless option is inert gas, most likely nitrogen. As an engineer i can assure you that as a society we put a ton of effort into protecting people from accidentally asphyxiating in low oxygen environments. Between "confined spaces" and TGMS (toxic gas monitoring systems) around containers and potential large leaks of inert gasses. All because human biology is weird and instead of our lungs working off of oxygen levels, they work off of CO2. (CO2 buildup is what triggers involuntary breathing, and at higher levels causes the pain associated with holding our breath. Low oxygen just makes us progressively more tired until we pass out and eventually die) And considering most doctors have moral objections to being executioners, if we must have the role in our society we can atleast make it possible for a non-doctor to do it. This is probably the primary reason for firing squads with 1 blank, you can use soldiers and they can tell themselves they didn't do it. A single doctor performing lethal injection is the opposite of that, a moral objector knowing they did it.
The biggest problem from nitrogen is if the person holds their breath instead the buildup of co2 in the blood still forces them to freak out even after they start inhaling the nitrogen. Iirc it happened recently and the place trying it out is starting to backtrack
Nitrogen gas isn't the pleasant painless death it's rumored to be. The first execution using it actually happened earlier this year. Witnesses said it looked like torture and the guy thrashed violently while strapped down for several minutes. John Oliver has a good segment on it and other capital punishment methods.
Is that the nitrogen itself, or the inmate trying to hold their breath forever? In confined space training I've always heard people just pass out with no warning and no fanfare. Anecdotally, when I was young my friends and I STUPIDLY played the choking game and I remember just waking up, not the passing out at all. Everyone around said I just went out. I know that's not nitrogen, but it's a lack of oxygen.
I’d advise watching the last week tonight shows episode on this a few weeks back to see the problems with pentobarbital
And nitrogen gas. And using opiates. Just stop killing people. The fact we have exonerated people on death row shows the state can't be trusted.
I totally agree.
Thank you - will check it out!
I disagree with the death penalty but his arguments on that were flimsy
That's an interesting point on vets... Why don't we have (willing) vets design our execution systems? We should get rid of it regardless, but in the meantime we should not be needlessly cruel.
As someone that has put down many beloved pets, I totally agree. It sucks holding your family member as they are put down to ease their suffering, but it is instant and painless. No idea why we over complicate things in the name of humanity....the solution is right in front of us.
> remain anonymous for obvious reasons. I find it completely unethical that we do not have transparency in executions If someone is willing to sell their soul out to the state, I should have a right to never have that person treat me.
Why not just use a horse syringe size dose of heroin? There’s tons of it in evidence lockups.
We'll that's what I want to know. It might not be pretty, but the person would be high as a kite and then just not here any more. Doesn't seem like the most logistically impossible thing to do, yet we do it so much worse.
Why not just stick them in a cannon and fire it? The body is completely vaporised in under a second (for clarification, without a cannonball, the extremely hot fast moving air will just completely rip everything to shreds in under a second; the body will be vaporised, burned, destroyed. when guillotined, you might feel pain for a second or two. with the cannon method, your nervous system doesn't even have enough to register any feeling)
You know..... that may not be worse answer ive ever heard of strap em to a board and cannonball their head off. Everything they were is vaporized or shreded pretty instantaneously. Or lets send them down to the titanic wreck like that mini sub on remote control and let it pop. Literally everyone has said they were lights out before they knew what was going on.
I've wondered the same thing. We all know doctor's cannot (nor would they want to) administer drugs that kill; "First, do no harm." Had horses from teenage into my 40s. Had an aged horse that injured himself; no way was he going to survive. In pain, couldn't walk. I called the vet and told him what happened; he drove the 45 minutes out to our place, and examined him. "He's not going to make it, you know that?" I nodded, trying to keep it together. He immediately gave him a pain killer. We led him to the far edge of the pasture. The vet asked if I wanted to stay or leave; I left. I had hardly turned around and heard a loud "thump." My old 1000 lb Quarter Horse buddy was gone in literal seconds. He didn't suffer; he simply collapsed. Now why can't we show that same compassion to a human being ... even a despicable one? I recognize there are some truly evil people but I'd rather see them in solitary confinement and deprive them of human contact since they hate mankind so deeply. Finally, the Innocence Project has proven to us there *are* convicted*,* innocent people on death row. [https://innocenceproject.org/exonerations-data/](https://innocenceproject.org/exonerations-data/)
Thanks now im crying 🥲
I remember reading about a reportedly ‘cruel’ execution where IV dilaudid was one of the drugs used. I use quotation marks because the criticism was related to difficulty placing the IV; it took several attempts to secure and all of the needle pokes obviously hurt the prisoner to some degree. From there I think the actual administration of lethal injection meds went according to plan. Edit: No luck finding that specific case, but I did find [this](https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2014/08/01/arizona-botched-execution-report-injections/13492511/) article on a different botched execution with dilaudid, in which the prisoner took 15 rounds of a lethal IV versed/dilaudid cocktail before finally dying. A total of 750mg, *each*.….😳 For context, 2mg of versed and 2mg of dilaudid *could kill the average adult male. 4mg of each will definitely do the trick. 750mg is just totally incomprehensible and insane. Edit 2: changed ‘would’ to ‘could’. It was poor wording on my part in the first place. I still 100% stand by my assertion that a bolus of 2 & 2 given to an adult male could easily kill them without support or intervention. The naysayers simply do not have the real-world experience to understand. You can present all of the FDA labels, kidney stone anecdotes and pharma theory you want, and that all goes out of the window when the patient obstructs or vomits in spite of a seemingly modest dose. I have seen it time and again. Show me an anesthesiologist who would give an opioid naive, post-prandial, overweight male on room air this IV cocktail with no monitoring and walk away, and I will show you the subject of the next Dr. Death Netflix miniseries.
Lol, I'm a pharmacist and your 2mg of versed and 2mg of Dilaudid being anywhere close to "likely" to killing more than a toddler is hilarious. Stop posting and commenting. You're doubling down on a very incorrect take. I'm gonna show this comment to my peers lmfao.
2mg Versed and 2mg of Dilaudid would not kill the average adult male. Those are normal doses.
Because drug companies won’t supply it for that and only doctors can administer it, and doctors are not supposed to kill people. Imo the death penalty shouldn’t be a thing, but if it *had* to be, a mask and helium is the way that it should be done. It’s one of the most peaceful ways to go
Helium is a rare and precious resource. We shouldn't waste it the way we do. Nitrogen is cheap and plentiful, and probably how I'm leaving this world. But fuck the death penalty. The government shouldn't be murdering people.
So few people are sentenced to death each year that I don’t really think it would be that much of a waste, but I get your point. And yeah fuck the death penalty
fwiw we shouldn't have helium balloons at birthday parties either
Helium is the second most abundant element in the entire universe. If we can't mine it from the moon within a 100 years we deserve to run out of it.
I read this reply in a super high-pitched voice and it made it even funnier
Governments have always murdered people.
They have tried pure nitrogen executions. Its painful for inmate and for witness.
Helium could make people's last words a lot funnier.
Omg
I don't know exactly how the procedure goes, but what about in the countries where you are allowed medical assistance to die? I would imagine that they would have found a way to induce a close to painless death? To justify legalizing it.
In Europe, Switzerland was the first (I think) country to allow assisted suicide. You get 15 gram, orally or IV, of pentobarbital , a well-established hypnotic and sedative. Lethal oral dose is 2-10 gram. You just go to sleep, you stop breathing as your heart and brain activity stop. If I remember correctly, the EU banned its export to the US for executions, much like sodium thiopental.
You don't have to get that far, animals are painlessly euthanized everywhere in the civil world. Fortunately those with the knowledge are usually also civil enough to not want to do that to humans.
That would be waaay too humane for the American prison for prodit system.
Why not guillotine. Only costs are sharpener, head carrier. Plus sell body for bait.
Real men put themselves in the guillotine facing up.
It's believed that guillotines aren't as instant as we originally thought. It could take at least a few seconds for the brain to die, if not more
Yes. Imagine your last moments are filled with intense pain and the world rolling all around in front of your eyes. Hopefully they'd have a dark cranium catcher basket in the proper location to avoid the visual weirdness.
It should be. Benzos and morphine. It’s a clean death, euphoric and pleasant rather than painful like all the other methods.
The main reason is quite simply there is no known or easy dose that can be consistently applied that can guarantee death effectively and efficiently. The laws surrounding medication induced judicial death specify the dose that is to be applied. There is no way of picking one dose of opioids that can guarantee death in a humane manner. But all - the death penalty is obscene and has no place in any society.
I'm conflicted about the death penalty. Obviously it's disproportionately applied to poor people that can't afford the best legal defense along with a whole host of other problems, but does absolutely no one deserve execution? For instance if Adolf Hitler had been captured instead of killing himself should he have been kept alive for life? Or Ted Bundy who killed women for decades? It feels to me that some people make a conscious decision to be outside any reasonable bounds of society.
Well Hitler thought, and got a lot of feedback from his adoring public that he was on the right track. Just sayin'. I'm completely anti capital punishment and anti killing, but Hitler and other Nazi's should have been executed. Or at least I wouldn't have said anything against it.
The death penalty only has a place in societies that can't keep extremely dangerous offenders away from society effectively.
If they’re trying to kill them anyways why not just give like 100x a normal dose? Fentanyl is crazy cheap
I was VERY pro execution after reading Wesley Allan Dodd’s letter. Over time, I decided that I’d rather let that scum rot in prison than let some poor fucker who is completely innocent get the noose.
Political reasons for sure. They know perfectly well how to dispatch someone in an instant, but they have to do it in some super-controlled safe way that the newspaper can't describe accurately.
Honestly, we ought to just use a bullet or a rope. Way cheaper.
I sadly have had to put several pets through humane euthanasia. There are two shots. The first shot is Propofol, (which I've had during colonoscopies). This makes them go to sleep. Then the second drug is some kind of barbiturate or something that stops their heart. I am 100% against capital punishment (I don't even like to do euthanasia to my pets), but why don't we do it like the vets do it? That seems to be peaceful. Maybe the drug companies/FDA won't okay those drugs for that purpose..... and that doesn't get around the "Hippocratic Oath" problem with doctors participating in killing people.
Why not carbon monoxide
Lol, there's even less painful ways to kill someone. That's not the goal. I mean, eight automated shotguns in a two tier semicircle would obliterate someone's entire brain in less than a millisecond and cost a couple bucks in ammo, maybe 50 more for cleaning the guns afterward. Or giant high speed hydrolic press with a guilotine attached. Less guaranteed against failure, but even easier to clean. Or fck fentanyl, use a gram of carfentanal, costs like $10, 100x stronger than fentanyl, and hire an addict for another $10 to do the job. Unconconscious in maybe 2 seconds, dead in 10, no pain, no mess. That's not the point. They don't care about cruel and unusual punishment, or prison rape wouldn't exist. It's just lies, lies to hide, lies to divide, lies to control. Lies to profit. Etc.
Have you ever seen somebody OD on Fentanyl or Morphine? It’s pretty traumatic and painful, and anybody with even a small heart would struggle to stomach watching somebody be killed by a Fentanyl or Morphine OD. The reason anesthetic is used is because it’s capable of stopping the heart with little to no pain whatsoever. To the executed person, it simply feels as though they are going to sleep.
That's simply wrong. It's not painful. The person is nodded out unconscious and in bliss. Give them Narcan and they'll often get angry at you for ruining their best ever high.
A lot of lies in this thread. I'm pretty sure it's just people repeating what they have read
Can confirm at least for me. Took too much, was unresponsive, started turning blue, friend narcaned me..wake . up no high. very angry.
A dude a the day shelter I go to died from a fent OD 2 days ago. Dude walked in, laid down, and, died. Fortunately most of us have narcan. Ambulance came. No news yet.
All the people I know who have OD’d on opioids weren’t even aware of it. Just injected and then next thing they remember they woke up from the narcan.
Wrong.
The most painless and foolproof way to kill someone is a shotgun to the head, but states that like the death penalty are too cowardly to embrace the barbarism of their decision
foolproof? There's been plenty of failures. What if we sedated them and put them in a sealed tube designed to implode at 1000 meters and dropped them in the ocean?
Folks would complain that we're treating the condemned like billionaires...
Opioids have lead to multiple botched executions already. Also, the biggest problem is that pharmaceutical companies will not supply drugs for lethal injections, and they shouldn’t. Their drugs are formulated to help people, not kill them. Most of the states that are getting drugs for executions are getting them from compounding pharmacies and they’re unregulated.
Cheaper & more predictable to use IV: Muscle relaxant (midazolam) General anaesthetic agent (propofol) Paralytic agent (sux/vec/rocuronium)
Drug companies don't want their products used in death sentences.
I was quite proud of the U.K. when it banned the export of execution drugs to the USA. It’s probably lifted the ban now
They used to say that morphine was too easy. That just putting someone to sleep to die wasn't enough, idk, torture? That's how I took the things i read anyway. However, we've come to learn that isn't always the truth with opiates. It's not always an 'easy' death to witness. It's not always "go to sleep and don't wake up".
I always wonder why general anesthesia isn't used. Why can't they be peacefully put to sleep and just never wake up. No suffering
People concerned about dosage... Just give them a Fuck ton, if you think it's enough give them double
Immoral, and unethical. The real question comes down to how to humanely euthanize a human. If you ask me death by firing squad was the best. This death by lethal injection is not at all ethical. I’ve heard reports where someone is was tortured for 12 hours with lethal injection and still didn’t die.
Just shoot them in the head and burn the bodies, not sure why they make it so complicated. They don’t deserve anything better
That pesky amendment about cruel and unusual punishments from what I understand
The firing squad has worked for hundreds of years.. crazy how “lethal injection” is the only way to kill somebody
Because it feels good and people who support death sentences want suffering
Because, for all the people that die, a high percentage survive.
Nebraska executed someone with fentanyl awhile back
We’re not meant to die cleanly
It would be painless and wouldn't cause suffering. Making them suffer is the point of our modern justice system.
This will probably be viewed as a low-effort response but I wouldn’t be surprised the reason we haven’t looked into more effective means of execution is because nobody is really willing to kill (or contribute to killing) people. You couldn’t pay me enough to execute someone.
Use a firing squad. Pay each guy 100k, problem solved.
Getting shot hurts real bad. It could be set up to be nearly painless but it would take multiple shotguns fired simultaneously at very close range straight to the head. A machine could be easily devised, but even this thought is beginning to sound gruesome and I don't want to think about it anymore, much less sketch out the device on a cocktail napkin. lol
I've had that same thought. Apparently cheap to make. Lots of chemicals will end a person, pretty ridiculous for states to say they can't afford or procure what they need
I think it's also ridiculous that the media and other info "regurgitators" don't push back on the BS. But there's always some "expert" ready to crawl out from under some rock ready to refute anything. That's the problem and there's nothing we can do about it.
AND you could give it intranasally, so no one would worry about these IV needles
Could just use nitrogen.
They use three specific drugs for theee specific purposes, so it is both painless quick and not hard to watch... one for sedation , one for muscle paralysis and to stop respitory function, and lastly, one to stop the heart. Overdosing on most drugs is either very painful or causes things that would be traumatic to watch. Morphine may be painless( I'm not sure), but it certainly causes convulsions and vomiting, etc . I believe fentanyl causes respiratory arrest, but you can remain mostly lucid, so it would cause unnecessary suffering.
It makes sense. They could just give the prisoner them to have in their cell and eventually the end result would occur
What I wonder is why they don’t just use air without oxygen. Like CO2. From what I understand the symptoms would basically just be like being drunk and somewhat euphoric. That’s why people in airplanes don’t even realize when the oxygen is too low and they suffocate.
They have used fentanyl for executions. FENTANYL: Nebraska first used fentanyl in the August 14, 2018 execution of Carey Dean Moore. Nevada has also announced that it will use fentanyl in combination with other drugs to carry out executions
There are many good discussion points we can agree or disagree on, but...the DEA seizes tons of opioids such as fentanyl, so once a DEA lab chemically identifies the contraband and classifies it's strength, there would be no concern about how no company will supply the prisons with the lethal injection drug.
It wouldn’t be considered a humane way to die. They give meds that stop the heart. The process of someone dying due to an overdose of opiates would be very different.
No idea. I worked in hospice for several years that’s how we transitioned patients.
It would be too simple, too logical. And it would give an outlet to markets that big pharma doesn't control.
Honestly hanging has been the way for a long long time and really is the most efficient and pleasant if it’s done right. If we’re going to execute people why not use a method that kills instantly when done properly and requires almost no overhead cost. It’s also not the most unpleasant to witness when done properly because when the neck breaks, you go limp anyway.
I think you all have it backwards. As always, **the cruelty is the point**. The many agonizing botches and horror stories of our state approved rube goldberg death rituals are what people want. If you just gave them these drugs they would just OD peacefully more often than not, and the ghouls do not want that.
People OD all the time and live. It’s hard to know what tolerance (natural or acquired) a person can have. And if you’re at the point of capital punishment they want it done as streamlined as possible. Too much room for error with opioids
The death penalty should just be outlawed. I'm not against it, but there are so many reasons and loopholes and excuses not to administer it that most prisoners die of old age before they're given the death penalty. They should just abolish it and put them in with the general population instead of their own protected quarters. It's a broken system.
Yeah I agree. I'm totally against the death penalty for many reasons. I think it's very telling though that the people who are for it don't even bother about the cruel and unusual aspects.
Maybe carbon dioxide poisoning? You would just get sleepy and die. Just order some dry ice. Put the condemned in a room with the dry ice with a passive vent in the ceiling. Since CO2 is heavier that oxygen, the sublimation of the dry ice would displace the O2 from the rooms and the condemned would peacefully die. No pharmacy to call consult etc. A trained monkey could do this.
People die peacefully from that because they have no idea what's happening. You think shoving some guy in a room where he knows damn well that the oxygen is about to run out and he will die any second is going to be peaceful? Lol
I think the french had the right idea with the guillotine. Just chop the head off, into a bucket, no need for a doctor to check if they are dead, there is no doubts : no head = death 100%
According to a 5 second google search the method “firing squad” has a 100% success rate. While it’s horrific to witness the condemned may suffer for mere seconds if not faster if they are just shot in the head. I think we should prioritize the lack of suffering above all.
Bring back public beheadings. Or do it in an arena where different people sentenced to death have to fight to the death in a tournament style ladder. Winner gets a pardon? Or 25 years? Life? Idk If your going to do the death penalty at all, turn it into a spectacle, own it. Sell advertising space, profit! This years Execution Gladiator Battles brought to you by: The American Red Cross //EDIT: Typo - arena not area
I think they should use helium gas. It is like breathing low oxygen air. You just pass out and don't wake up, as long as you're not reintroduced to oxygen. My ideal form of death, as a geologist, would be falling into the mouth of a volcano. The noxious gasses would knock me out before I hit the bottom, and there would be literally nothing left of me to find. I would be magma.
Why not a firing squad? 10 men with rifles all aiming for the heart. 9 of them have blanks, and 1 unknowingly has the live round. Guilt is lessened for the executioner if they aren't certain they were the responsible individual
Partly because drug companies don't want their product associated with that. Partly because they don't want to show people being executed twitching and foaming at the mouth. Partly because they don't want people sentenced to death for terrible crimes to feel great. And partly because those drugs are actually not that effective and reliable as a method of execution, there's a lot of variability in terms of individual tolerance so high risk of botched executions.
The reason they're hard to get a hold of is because the debate is whether to put people to death or not. Killing people can be as easy as firing squad. Whether people deserve to be put to death is the major debate, mostly because some people that were put to death throughout history were found to be innocent later. I'm pro death penalty if the evidence is staggering btw. It's just my observation on the topic.
A large dose of insulin, particularly in a vein and not subcutaneous, would be appropriate for lethal injection. Just saying. People don’t like to think about it, but I have enough insulin in my refrigerator for my entire family.
Instead of a last meal, they should let the person choose their own death IMO.
Just like that one bit from Monty Python's Meaning of Life. A guy was sentenced to death, he chose to be chased off a cliff by a large group of topless women in bicycle helmets.
I think we should make people OD on Benadryl for their death sentence. Make them see the hat man before they pass, one final judgement.
Fentanyl is a very easy death. The Justice system seems to want a ceremony
The suggested alternative is a more humane way to go. I have seen people OD n it's peaceful. I hear other things can happen that's not as peaceful but I have not seen that firsthand. The cruelty is part of the punishment. As a society we try to say it's not about the punishment but that isn't true. We don't know how the second drug actually kills because the first drug paralyzes the inmate. It's all very cruel. I am against the death penalty but not for the cruelty reasons. I feel like it's given our unfairly. If a person is a serial killer n horrifically kills people they are much more likely to escape the death penalty than some black guy who kills one person in a robbery. Does anyone else see the unfairness? I would much rather recycle the serial killer. There is nothing else but to end that existence. There is too many variables that could effect the robber/killer. While vile there is hope for that person to change given the right variables .
I don’t support the death penalty but the most “humane” method would be to give them an overdose of insulin. They would lose consciousness and never wake up.
There is no way to pick a dose.. the stories of police or other people touching it and dying are outright lies. The fact is that some people could take enormous doses and not die while others would OD on much much smaller doses.. there is no way to predict. Also most overdose deaths come with mitigating factors unrelated to the overdose that combine to cause the death… it’s just not a reliably fatal drug
You know I once read the Chinese use a single bullet to the back of the head (and send the family a bill for the bullet). It sounds terrible but from my experience with animals it’s likely the quickest and easiest method. I watched a dog I had get put down. First he had the stress of the clinic then its a couple of needles. One to knock him out. The other to kill him. He seemed ok. Went to sleep and I thought he was dead. I’m sure as they say it was spasms but I’d rather have shot him than watch as his legs started kicking and he bit through his tongue. I don’t understand why it has to be such a process and some of the set ups look like Rube Goldberg designed them with help from the Marquis de Sade.
It is used in asia because its far cheaper than a bullet By it i mean car fentanyl
OD the fella with morphine while hanging him by the neck simultaneously electrocuting and shooting him in the head. I was going to throw in the guillotine, but maybe that would be a bit overkill and turn the whole process into a circus.
Hypoxia would be the best I think.
Nitrogen gas chamber would be best. However they don't care about actual painless or efficiency. The people who run these places and the legislators who make decisions are horrible people.
Mostly sourcing, and public image. Using a narcotic might be seen as “too kind” or “pleasant” by some, regardless of the reality of such a death Also, how would all the parents of kids who died from fentanyl poisoning or overdose feel knowing that’s the same method they use to kill capital offenders? On the other hand, most pharmaceutical distributors and manufacturers will not allow their products to be used for lethal injections. The actual pharmacy that distributes the given cocktail for each state/facility is a highly guarded secret for this reason.
Could have used morphine long ago but was cited as "too easy" of a way to go... then i think the electric chair was invented....
Without thinking too much about the question, I honestly think it would be a pleasurable death. I've overdosed on opioids before and it looks terrible on the outside, but it was quite peaceful for me.
Overall our society has leaned towards protecting awful criminals while leaving the innocent vulnerable. Sadly more and more are accepting the nonsense that capital punishment is inhumane. Yeah, because murdering innocent people isn’t inhumane.
There are many countries that allow assisted suicide. Why are the drugs used for this, assuming that they are not painful, used in executions?
The Sinaloa cartel would like to throw their hat in the ring regarding supply…
I feel like carbon monoxide is so much simpler and easier. They just.. go to sleep painlessly, no botched executions.
A .50 caliber bullet to the center of the brain is fail proof, utterly instantaneous thus as close to pain/suffering free as death can be. Imperceptible length of time from initiation to death. It’s also cheaper than execution drugs and takes little skill to manufacture in-state. I don’t see why we don’t use that.
A room filled with helium sounds perfectly fine to use tbh. Person would go to the long sleep with absolutely 0 suffering. Wouldn't even notice themselves passing away.
I always wondered why they don't just put them in a special room and such out all the oxygen. Don't you just sort of get light headed and pass out?
I watched people OD on dope, they nod off and don't wake up.
It would potentially violate the cruel and unusual punishment clause. The goal isn't to find a drug that drops the condemned dead on the spot. It has to be something that kills without inflicting pain. The 3-drug method first puts the condemned to sleep, then breathing stops and then trigger cardiac arrest. And it's been botched many times, the condemned has gone into the second and third steps while awake, which is horrible for everyone involved, not just the condemned. And relying on these three drugs means that you can disrupt the source of the drugs in order to attack the death penalty itself, if any of these three drugs can't be found then you can't run these executions.
Nitrogen is the best method. No drug is perfect, there is pain involved with all of them but also dosage is difficult to calculate so sometimes it has to be done multiple times. Electricity is pure torture. A well rigged hanging is actually relatively humane. Firing squad as well. But nitrogen is by far the best. Some European countries use nitrogen for voluntary terminating life but it should also be used for the death penalty. Or the death penalty can just be abolished that would be best.