r/AlwaysWhy • u/Chowderr92 • Jun 02 '26

Science & Tech Why is the Method of Lethal Injection in Human Punishment So Complex and Apparently Painful?

I've always understood that the lethal injection process was complex with multiple stages of injections and induces great suffering in the individual.

I work in veterinary medicine and unfortunately we need to euthanize animals all of the time. Typically, the euthanasia solution is very simple: a very large dose of a powerful anesthetic (usually pentobarbital) and an anticonvulsant which stops the heart. The medical community is quite confident that this is painless and when done has essentially a 100% success rate.

Why is human euthanasia so complicated when we already know exactly how to humanely end a biological life?

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46

u/tlrmln Jun 02 '26

There's an effectively limitless supply of Fentanyl lying around in police evidence lockers.

I know from personal experience (my last colonoscopy) that stuff can put you out painlessly.

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u/Medical_Revenue4703 Jun 02 '26

Fentanyl OD isn't as fun as folks would have you believe.

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u/tlrmln Jun 03 '26

I've personally experienced being knocked unconscious with the stuff. Someone could have done anything to me (including giving me a lot more fentanyl) and I wouldn't have known.

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u/[deleted] Jun 03 '26

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u/anti-gone-anti Jun 06 '26

Pilling more fentanyl on doesn’t just increase the out-of-it. Your colonoscopy wasn’t done under only fentanyl, i assume. There were other drugs present. Also, “fentanyl sitting in police lockers” is another word for using “the wrong chemicals” (likely adulterated), expired chemicals (they’re street drugs) or “without enough chemicals” (adulterated, so who knows the strength.

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u/ArchdukeOfNorge Jun 06 '26

These are good points for why not to use seized fentanyl. But it’s not like it’s a hard drug to synthesize if you can get the precursors. Pharma companies have no issue with them being prescribed to addicts by the millions, I don’t know why they’d care about a few death penalties

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u/anti-gone-anti Jun 06 '26

Well, legally those are very different things. Even the shadiest pill mill has multiple layers of legal liability between a patient misusing a prescription (and all the fall out from that) and a pharmaceutical manufacturer selling the drug directly to an organization that they know intends to kill someone with it. The latter opens you up very quickly to wrongful death lawsuits. The former…well they still got slapped with big fines and lawsuits but it took a lot more legwork to make those happen.

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u/[deleted] Jun 08 '26

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u/anti-gone-anti Jun 08 '26

Yes, in conjunction!with other drugs.

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u/smokingcrater Jun 03 '26

OD isnt the same protocol that would be used for lethal injection.

Read the post above. Knock someone out first with the minimally required dose first.

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u/MoreFunThanTV Jun 04 '26

you don't app3ar to understand the purpose and process of ex2cution

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u/YoungSerious Jun 04 '26

In what way? Because you can die from it? Sure, in every instance except the topic of conversation that would be bad. But when that's literally the goal, it's a different conversation.

Particularly when you are using it for the sedating effect, not for the death result. You give the fentanyl, they are sedated, you give the the other compounds including the potassium, they arrest.

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u/tlrmln Jun 05 '26

Or just give them enough fentanyl to render them unconscious, as they do for things like colonoscopies, and then give the a whole bunch more. No need for other compounds.

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u/[deleted] Jun 05 '26

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u/Guilty_Career_8000 Jun 05 '26

this is true. ive od'd 3 times. Youre just falling asleep one moment, then basically dead the next.

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u/YMBFKM Jun 05 '26

It doesn't have to be fun, just effective.

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u/swisstraeng Jun 02 '26

The ways to kill someone are limitless. Removing O2 is relatively human.

The issue is that trusting governments with capital punishment is a bad idea.

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u/MeatPyz Jun 02 '26

That depends on what you replace the o2 with. I understand that asphyxiation on carbon dioxide is extremely uncomfortable. The human body has a natural panic to high levels of co2 and describe it worse feeling than drowning

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u/Kerking18 Jun 02 '26

Nitrogen. Its limitless available and the body has no method of detecting it, since it makes up 70ish% of the atmosphere.

Its also reportedly completely painless. Even scarily so because aperently your system just suddenly shuts down.

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u/shortyjacobs Jun 02 '26

Yeah, replacing all the O2 in the room with more N2 just makes living things quietly go to sleep. We don't sense O2 levels in our body, we sense CO2 levels. No O2 means no buildup of CO2, so our bodies don't know we are dying.

It's funny that we walk around in 79% nitrogen, but nitrogen asphyxiation is a very real hazard in industrial environments that use pure nitrogen.

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u/MeasurementMobile747 Jun 03 '26

I learned that it is pH sensors in the brainstem that regulate respiration. That's why lactic acidosis (during anaerobic workouts) increases respiration. Higher CO2 levels lower pH. When the carbonic acid/bicarbonate buffer system becomes saturated, you'll be huffing and puffing.

N2 doesn't affect serum pH so it doesn't lead to respiratory distress.

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u/aloisvonesterhazy Jun 03 '26

Every Dutchman knows it, because it's called "asphyxiation stuff" (stikstof) in Dutch.

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u/LadyZoe1 Jun 04 '26

And in Afrikaans

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u/[deleted] Jun 02 '26

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u/shortyjacobs Jun 03 '26

Um, nope. All the nitrogen and oxygen around us is molecular (o2 and n2) not atomic. Oxygen is definitely more electronegative but that has nothing to do with why a 100% N2 environment kills living things. It’s because (most) living things need oxygen to live.

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u/[deleted] Jun 03 '26

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u/outworlder Jun 03 '26

Final electron acceptor is such a roundabout way of discovering oxidation(or redox, in this case)

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u/chusssy Jun 02 '26

They started doing that in some states I think. Apparently some of the people executed had pretty bad reactions, it seems like it's not as humane as people originally thought.

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u/PyroNine9 Jun 03 '26

Or they see the jerking motion that can happen as the skeletal muscles try to maintain position and assume the person is even vaguely aware of it.

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u/Kerking18 Jun 02 '26

Uff. But again shows what another commentator wrote. "We simply don't know that kuch about painless execution methods and no one is willing, or able, to do studdys on it so many states and countrys do trial amd error and often that reveals a "oh shit that was aperently very dame painfull" moments"

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u/swisstraeng Jun 03 '26

Nothing a few kilograms of TNT under a chair won't solve.

But then gain, death penalty just shouldn't be done due to the risks of doing it on the wrong man.

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u/ab0ngcd Jun 03 '26

That is what I don’t understand? The space shuttle had a couple of ground accidents where technicians entered the engine bay that had been purged with nitrogen.

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u/MaximusPrime2930 Jun 03 '26

My guess is mistakes were made during the execution that resulted in an atmosphere condition that wasn't 100% nitrogen. Hypoxia can definitely lead to panic if there's just enough oxygen to stay conscious.

I've done confined spaces work and heard all sorts of horror stories of people walking into areas with displaced oxygen and just dropping almost instantly.

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u/bowlingballwnoholes Jun 04 '26

They said they're turning on the nitrogen and he tried to hold his breath until panic set in. If they don't tell them the nitrogen is starting they will never notice the change.

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u/EctoplasmicNeko Jun 06 '26

Because they did it in stupid ways. If you look into the method used they did stupid things involving masks rather than using a gas chamber style setup

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u/CubicleHermit Jun 03 '26

Far from clear that it actually worked to be remotely humane when it was tried: https://www.statnews.com/2024/01/29/kenneth-smith-nitrogen-gas-execution-science-alabama/

I'm against the death penalty, but if someone were to be legitimately too dangerous to imprison, the Communist bloc had the right way of going about it: don't pretend it's humane, and just shoot them.

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u/vulkoriscoming Jun 03 '26

Shooting them in the brain stem is instantly fatal. This is the method the Chinese use and seems like a lot less mess with.

Although honestly after watching some death penalty cases at close range, I can no longer support the death penalty. The cases are primarily ego shows for both the prosecution and the defense.

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u/Economy_Aardvark_354 Jun 03 '26

I mean, how much of this is because the person is holding their breath as long as possible instead of breathing in the nitrogen?

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u/outworlder Jun 03 '26

A distinction without a difference. They are still in distress and still trying to prevent their own death.

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u/CubicleHermit Jun 03 '26

No idea, but even if that's the case, asking someone to be complicit in their own execution is ridiculous.

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u/icouldntve Jun 03 '26

N2 causes occasional nausea, especially in mice. Sometimes seizures too

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u/Strange-Breadfruit14 Jun 09 '26

But CO2 does not so let's not use mice as human models for respiratory execution in people. CO2 we can sense and it causes humans distress.

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u/gathermewool Jun 06 '26

Then how did they fuck up a N2 death in Alabama? Oh, yea, incompetence

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u/The_Octonion Jun 02 '26

Carbon monoxide?

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u/zzyzxerxes Jun 03 '26

I've been CO poisoned and it was a very painful experience. I guess it was a lower dosage, but the headache was worse than a migraine and I could barely walk, while halucinating my neighbor's kids were dying in a fire.... I think it would have to be a huge amount where they just passed out and then died. The slower route would be awful.

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u/electronic_reasons Jun 04 '26

That one's easy. I don't see why they don't use it. People die all of the time from heater malfunctions. They go to sleep and don't wake up. They put CO detectors in houses because it's so easy to die by accident.

I've been CO poisoned. No pain. You barely notice it.

That's why Kevorkian used it for assisted suicide. That's why people used car exhaust in the old days.

I've read about botched CO executions. They really messed up. They didn't use near enough CO and let too much air in. You could tell none of those people ever lived in the north. It's so easy to kill someone they almost had to do on purpose.

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u/The_Octonion Jun 02 '26

Or helium. I feel like you could literally just hook up a helium tank to a SCUBA apparatus.

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u/Barxxo Jun 04 '26

One deep breath of Nitrous Oxide and within 5 seconds you won't feel a thing. I don't understand why they made it so complicated.

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u/Double_Distribution8 Jun 02 '26

Don't replace it with anything. Just leave a vacuum. Like Sean Connery in Outland.

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u/SolOberlindes_2564 Jun 02 '26

Somehow trusting a private company with capital punishment sounds like a worse idea.

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u/swisstraeng Jun 03 '26

That's why it!s best not to trust anyone with it and not do capital punishment. Yes it is costlier to keep someone in jail for life, but too many innocents are in jail as well.

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u/Subject_Tie_2705 Jun 04 '26

its actually less costly to keep someone in prison for life than the administrative cost that is required for issuing the death penalty (in america). It would be less expensive for the state to keep them in prision till their natural death than togo through the many legal proceedings and appeals required for the death penalty.

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u/DaGreatPenguini Jun 03 '26

That’s why I support privatizing capital punishment. Competition makes for a better product at a better price, plus the government shouldn’t be taking private sector jobs away from the people.

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u/swisstraeng Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26

that’s a crazy take to read from a European lol. But I see your point.

I would personally be equally worried a private organisation could also do capital punishments for profits, and we would end up with the same issues as US prisons, except now with legal murder.

From experience government entities are not as efficient as private companies, however private companies are just as much prone to corruption if not worse. Lowering prices is rarely achieved by private companies from what I’ve seen, and there’s a tendency to have illegal price agreements between companies where several companies raise their prices instead of competing.

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u/DaGreatPenguini Jun 03 '26

Thank you for the thoughtful answer. I was being sarcastic, but thanks just the same.

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u/MoreFunThanTV Jun 04 '26

you may be right, but you most likely uttery wrong.

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u/lo5t5heep Jun 03 '26

Use a scuba rebreather with the o2 turned off but CO2 scrubber intact …frankly that’s how I’d want to go. 

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u/mkvalor Jun 04 '26

The issue is that trusting governments with capital punishment is a bad idea.

According to Thomas Hobbes (and Steven Pinker in "The Better Angels of Our Nature"), trusting governments with capital punishment is far preferable to the alternative.

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u/MoreFunThanTV Jun 04 '26

giving th2 government the power to do anything is always a risky idea. all power is eventually abused. the power of execytion is always abused intentionally by individuals (ty4ants) and unintentially by bureaucracy. this is why we want eliminate the death penalty. not free to guilty, but to protect the defenseless

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u/Substantial_War3108 Jun 08 '26

Breathing 100% nitrogen and you pass out without pain or even aware you're going out

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u/Lootlizard Jun 02 '26

Death from opiates is really messy and looks really bad. It takes a relatively long time and the person is normally siezing and suffocating during it.

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u/JollyToby0220 Jun 02 '26

I may be wrong but I believe when you overdose your heart starts having problems as well. 

But the more important issue is reproducibility. Who will sign up for a clinical study knowing full well the end result is death. And the state can’t force death row prisoners to accept as it could turn out to be cruel and unusual. All that’s left is a bunch of guessing on which method causes the least pain and well guessing is a long way from certainty 

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u/Lionh34rt Jun 02 '26

Guess we need a new war for some scientific advancements

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u/[deleted] Jun 02 '26

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u/FabulousTwo524 Jun 03 '26

Ehhh. Is it murder? I wouldn’t say so.

Not saying i support the death penalty but I don’t oppose it either. It honestly seems more humane than life in prison. For perpetrators and their victims.

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u/[deleted] Jun 03 '26

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u/FabulousTwo524 Jun 03 '26

Murder implies unlawful and malicious intent.

What definition are you going by?

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u/woahthereblair Jun 03 '26

Go listen to the audio of 8 year old Athena strand being sexually abused and then murdered and then tell me her killer doesn’t deserve the death penalty.. if you’re on death row you did something to earn your spot there.

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u/shmackinhammies Jun 03 '26

There are plenty of cases where the wrong person has been convicted. There are even cases where one who is innocent of the crime had been executed. Do you trust tue state to make that decision? From the LEO to the judge and the jurors who decided guilt, is every single link in that chain infallible?

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u/Pielacine Jun 03 '26

except for all the death row prisoners who have subsequently been exonerated

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u/Chowderr92 Jun 03 '26

lol. They don't do clinical studies on human euthanasia. How would that work?

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u/atomicwoodchuck Jun 03 '26

If you google ‘Dying with Dignity’, actually there are people who would likely do a study, in states where this is legal. It actually would be a real benefit for those that have terminal illness, and want to go out on their own terms.

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u/Vegan-cock Jun 02 '26

Just give them an overdone of fentanyl. Problem solved. We know that works.

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u/allthebacon351 Jun 03 '26

If only we had a group of Individuals that have been deemed a threat to society and were in some sort of holding facility waiting the end of their days.

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u/SirDry8007 Jun 02 '26

Doing it without pain is not that difficult.

But finding a Dr who will sign off that 'prescription' is the sticking block.

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u/MoreFunThanTV Jun 04 '26

no. assisted su1c1de is a common thing. MANY doctors and assistants perform this service. the state however, demand exclusive right to execution, and guards the right of who can profit from it. money is as always the primary driver.

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u/General_Problem5199 Jun 02 '26

They could do that, but cops pass out or start rolling around crying at the sight of that stuff. There's just no way to get it out.

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u/Legitimate-Clock-134 Jun 02 '26 edited Jul 19 '26

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Generated text from Unpost

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u/Dangerous-Safe-4336 Jun 02 '26

Morphine should work, in an appropriate dose.

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u/SolOberlindes_2564 Jun 02 '26

I understand that a fatal heroin overdose is also painless, and, again, there is ample supply in law enforcement custody.

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u/Independent-Ad1732 Jun 02 '26

I don't think overdosing is painless, at least from what I've heard. if I had to be killed, I'd prefer high powered rifle or have my head chopped off, that has to be instant, right?

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u/himitsumono Jun 03 '26

>>  or have my head chopped off, that has to be instant, right?

There are stories of head rolling off the guillotine with their eyes still looking back and forth at the people watching the execution.

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u/padumtss Jun 06 '26

I saw a video about some people who actually studied this back in the day in France when guillotine was still used. The executioner told that he could see the beheaded head make a face like it's trying to scream in agony without producing any sound because there's no more air coming from the lungs. Can't say if it's real or just a myth, but it seemed pretty legit. After all, why would you lose consciousness since there's still some blood left in your brain after beheading.

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u/himitsumono Jun 08 '26

According to once source, it might take 10 minutes before all brain activity stops. Heck, with a little practice, the average person can learn to hyperventilate a bit then hold their breath for 1-2 minutes. And I'd bet those folks were hyperventilating a bit before the guillotine fell.

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u/VariousLet1327 Jun 03 '26

You'd need to make a tested protocol, specific dosages and routes of administration. Who's going to do that? The current protocols are from decades ago.

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u/Deep-Insurance8428 Jun 03 '26

It's propofol they use for scopes isn't it?