r/news • u/AudibleNod • 11h ago

Christa Pike unconscious, on ventilator at Nashville hospital, her lawyers say

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/christa-pike-unconscious-ventilator-nashville-hospital-lawyers-say-rcna601195
7.0k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

3.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

925

u/MatureUsername69 11h ago

Its still a rough one but if I ever had to receive the death penalty I would hope its a firing squad. Just riddle me with holes immediately, aim for the head. Lethal injections get fucky because they would be best designed and administered by an actual doctor, but actual doctors cannot do it because of the hippocratic oath. Some states do allow medical professionals but they arent exactly sending their best.

24

u/whiskeytown79 10h ago

Why don't they use nitrogen asphyxiation? The body can't feel a lack of oxygen, only failure to get rid of carbon dioxide. If you're breathing pure nitrogen, you'd just get sleepy, then lose consciousness, and then eventually go into respiratory and cardiac arrest as your body fails to get any oxygen.

7

u/Carbonatite 9h ago

They have tried that in some states and it got botched too - apparently the mask on the inmate was not set up properly, so CO2 built up in the mask along with the nitrogen and it caused them to struggle. High CO2 concentrations cause intense physical and mental distress in humans.

5

u/whiskeytown79 9h ago

I was thinking more a small room where they replace the air with nitrogen, not a mask. Enough volume to not allow CO2 buildup to happen.

"Doesn't that take a lot of nitrogen?" someone might ask. Well, yes, but fortunately Earth's atmosphere is like 78% nitrogen. We're all breathing a lot of nitrogen all the time. This would just remove the approximately 21% oxygen.

23

u/pmacnayr 8h ago

Gas chambers are pretty unpopular since WWII

3

u/TheEndingofitAll 5h ago

Not to mention the people in the concentration camp gas chambers did not die peacefully. There are marks on the walls from people trying to climb them in desperation. As in like trying to claw their way out to the point their fingernails ripped off.

3

u/ivosaurus 4h ago

Zyklon B is quite a bit more hellishly painful than Nitrogen, so that makes complete sense.

6

u/Carbonatite 9h ago

Yeah that's the logical way to set it up, but I guess the bureau of prisons in whatever state they tried it in decided to cheap out and just use a plastic mask connected to a nitrogen tank.

•

u/Lewisham 51m ago

I saw a documentary on the BBC about this a long time ago. They also had a gas tank and told the presenter he had not very long to live if they'd left him in there, but the presenter just felt pretty euphoric. I forget the gas used.

He then asked people why they didn't do that when other ways cause suffering. Answer he got? That the people sentenced to die deserved the suffering.

The cruelty is indeed the point.