State’s ‘slow and agonizing’ execution of Kenneth Smith using an untested method labeled as cruel by experts and advocates

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/14097254

Smith’s execution by “nitrogen hypoxia” took around 22 minutes, according to media witnesses, who were led into a viewing room at the William C Holman correctional facility in Atmore shortly before 8 pm local time.

After the nitrogen gas began flowing, Smith convulsed on the gurney for several minutes. The state had previously said the nitrogen gas would cause Smith to lose consciousness in seconds and die within minutes, according to the Associated Press.

“I’ve been to four previous executions and I’ve never seen a condemned inmate thrash in the way that Kenneth Smith reacted to the nitrogen gas,” Lee Hedgepeth, a journalist who witnessed the execution, told the BBC’s Newsday programme.

  • limonfiesta@lemmy.worldEnglish
    103·
    10 months ago

    So if I’m sentenced to 20 years for first degree murder, is the fear and terror I feel over losing my freedom the state torturing me?

    What about if my doctor’s office refuses to give me my diagnosis over the phone on a Friday, and tells me I have to wait for an office appointment on Monday. Is that torture? Should I file a legal complaint or try to get charges pressed?

    You’re conflating internal agony and anticipatory fear, with actual externally applied methods of torture.

    I understand what point you’re trying to make, but words have meaning and if everything is torture, then how bad can torture really be?

    • ninjan@lemmy.mildgrim.comEnglish
      16·
      10 months ago

      If you redefine torture into any form of discomfort sure. But that is not what the word means.

      “the action or practice of inflicting severe pain or suffering on someone as a punishment or in order to force them to do or say something.”

      So solitary is for sure torture. Normal prison shouldn’t be but can for sure be in some cases. It’s only slightly better than the corporeal punishments (lashes, stockade) of old in my opinion.

      How would actually killing someone, with the person being killed being fully aware that it happens, as it happens. Not be “externally applied methods of torture”? Asphyxiation has been used as a method of torture for millennia.

      • ObsidianBreaks@lemmy.ml
        1·
        10 months ago

        I’d argue that depending on the victim that ‘any form’ of discomfort could be considered torture. What should define torture isn’t a ‘commonly accepted idea of torture’ but what the victim considers torture. Some people are quite fine with not having any company for example, but other people if they were socially isolated would consider this a torture, especially for a protracted period of time.