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Notes -
Over a decade ago, the BBC came out with a documentary titled How to Kill a Human Being that went into what the director believed to be the most humane and painless way to execute someone if you really wish to do so. Towards the end of the documentary, they interview someone who believes that death row criminals don’t deserve the most humane death possible because those criminals hardly offered their own victims a humane death. The documentary gives it an air of “Look, we’ve found a humane way to actually do executions, and these barbaric Americans don’t want to do that because to them, bloodthirsty cruelty is the point.”
Well, what do you know, Alabama has now actually implemented this “most humane” form of execution for the first time, and news coverage from the BBC and others have been almost exclusively negative. There’s little to no nuance, just statements that the UN and EU condemns this “particularly cruel and unusual punishment.” Where now is the context that the US is merely doing what it was previously criticized for not doing?
To be sure, the scene of thrashing does seem to be more violent than the documentary insinuated such an execution would be, but that itself appears to be because the inmate tried to forcibly hold their breath for as long as possible instead of allowing themselves to pass out from hypoxia. I wouldn’t pin the blame for voluntary thrashing on the method of execution.
What do you think? Am I wrong in reading this as just another case of “Americans can do nothing right”?
I remember this documentary! I watched it only once, when it came out, so it must have left an impression.
Honestly this seems like a big nothing to me. Even if you consider that the article wasn't really fair (though it seems reasonably balanced) it's not really reasonable to expect the BBC to have a consistent journalistic line on a specific, previously hypothetical execution method. the UN and especially the EU are just straight up against the death penalty - you can't join the EU if you have it - their opinions are not defined by a 15 year old speculative documentary. Also, the implication that Alabama was in any way shape or form concerned with the opinions of Yurop when they adopted this policy is hilarious.
The 'someone' they interviewed in the documentary wasn't some random from a trailer park - it was Professor Robert Blecker, who was (apparently) an extremely prominent figure in the death penalty debate. seems like the documentary made some effort to find a steelman for the pro-death-penalty side, no? Yes, yes, I know, journalists are the enemy, they love to misrepresent. But nobody forced that (probably very media savvy) professor to go on the air and talk about how humane execution is stupid because murderers should suffer. That "bloodthirsty cruelty is the point." was literally his point.
Edit: based on the timeline found by @sodiummuffin I’m going to take back the next paragraph about Alabama fucking it up. The guy actually did hold his breath for about 2 mins, struggled for about 2 mins, then passed out and died.
And as for the execution itself, it's pretty simple. They just fucked it up. the execution took 25 minutes and apparently the execute-ee was struggling for most of that. the 'holding his breath' excuse doesn't pass the smell test. Unless the guy was an olympic freediver he would have been able to hold his breath for, like, three minutes, then pass out and die. you can't survive in a nitrogen-only atmosphere for 20+ minutes, it's just physically impossible. Probably they didn't secure the mask properly or something and left the guy breathing diluted atmosphere.
Anyway, Alabama: Good idea, poor execution, 5/10 do better next time.
Is it? They probably adopted it due to its reputation as a humane form of execution, some of which is due to Europe.
It's been a while since I deep-dived on US execution policy, but what I remember is that every state has lethal injection, but sanctions from Europe make it progressively harder to obtain lethal injection drugs. The supreme court isn't friendly to the electric chair, so Alabama had to come up with something they could cast as humane, and some of the reputation for humane is due to Europe, but it's more about keeping the supreme court happy.
It’s not European sanctions that are preventing US states from obtaining lethal injection drugs. Yes I’m aware that some states were getting the drugs from, I think, the Netherlands for a while before they blocked the export, but the idea that the US, a country of 330 million people with the largest pharmaceutical industry on the planet, can’t possibly internally source drugs to kill people is absurd. The point being that it isn’t Europeans causing problems for the American death sentence, it’s other Americans.
I suspect that Alabama moving to nitrogen hypoxia is about 1% to do with humane-ness and 99% to do with the fact that unlike controlled drugs, it’s impossible to prevent Alabama from acquiring Nitrogen.
I dunno, if I'm a drug company, I'd look at "manufacturing drugs that very rarely get used" to be a vestigial-at-best method of generating profit versus "make cool and novel drug and get rich off the patent."
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