Why Oklahoma Plans to Execute People With Nitrogen

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: March 17, 2018 at 11:05:13 AM EDT
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Why Oklahoma Plans to Execute People With Nitrogen
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> [Note:  This item comes from friend Ed DeWath.  DLH]
>
> Why Oklahoma Plans to Execute People With Nitrogen 
> The state knows shockingly little about how this would work.
> By ELI HAGER
> Mar 15 2018
> <https://www.themarshallproject.org/2018/03/15/why-oklahoma-plans-to-execute-people-with-nitrogen>
>
> Oklahoma has always been the nation’s laboratory for capital punishment. 
>
> It was a state legislator named Bill Wiseman who in 1977 came up with the idea of lethal injection by asking the 
> state medical examiner for a more humane, scientific way to put human beings to death.
>
> It looks like Oklahoma might be experimenting again. On Wednesday, the state’s Attorney General and director of 
> corrections announced that a severe nationwide shortage of the drugs needed for lethal injection meant they would be 
> switching to nitrogen inhalation for future executions.
>
> Executing prisoners by nitrogen “hypoxia,” which deprives the body of oxygen, has never been tried by any state or 
> nation in the history of the world. But the gas is widely available for purchase from manufacturers (it has a host of 
> uses from welding to inflating tires to carbonating beer), which can’t be said of the lethal injection drugs 
> midazolam and pentobarbital. For humanitarian reasons, medical companies have largely stopped providing those 
> chemicals to state governments.
>
> “I was calling all around the world, to the back streets of the Indian subcontinent, to procure drugs,” Joe M. 
> Allbaugh, Oklahoma’s corrections director, said in his announcement of the switch to nitrogen.
>
> Allbaugh and state Attorney General Mike Hunter said Oklahoma could begin the nitrogen executions by the end of this 
> year. They said there would first be a period of 90 to 120 days for developing the new method and allowing lawyers 
> for death row prisoners to make their legal challenges in court. 
>
> Below, a recap of everything Oklahoma knows about its latest proposed execution method (hint: very little).
>
> How they got the idea
>
> In 2014, a Republican state representative and former highway trooper named Mike Christian watched a BBC documentary 
> called “How to Kill a Human Being,” which included a segment on nitrogen inhalation. Intrigued, he called up a high 
> school friend, Michael Copeland, who had previously served as attorney general of the small island nation of Palau.
>
> Copeland asked medical professionals at the University of Oklahoma to help study the idea, but they declined. 
> Instead, he and two other non-scientists compiled a nitrogen report for the state Legislature — which they presented 
> after preparing for just three hours one evening, according to Christine Pappas, a local professor and one of those 
> involved. 
>
> Their sources included articles from 1963 and 1977, as well as information on techniques of inert gas asphyxiation 
> used by assisted-suicide activists.
>
> How it became law
>
> After reading the report, Oklahoma lawmakers held a series of hearings on nitrogen gas, during which they watched 
> YouTube videos of teenagers inhaling helium, laughing and passing out. 
>
> They also considered a financial analysis that said “the costs would be minimal and include the one-time purchase of 
> a gas mask (similar to what one experiences at the dentist), and the price for a canister of nitrogen.”
>
> A two-page bill introducing the new method overwhelmingly passed both houses of the Legislature in spring 2015, with 
> the few holdouts expressing concern that prisoners might experience brief euphoria before they lost consciousness and 
> died.
>
> [snip]
>
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> Twitter: https://twitter.com/wa8dzp



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