No easy way to die

This week was a bad one for many convicted murderers in the United States. On Monday our Supreme Court denied the appeals of three death row inmates who were trying to argue that execution by lethal injection constituted cruel and unusual punishment.

The ruling ended a months-long moratorium on executions being observed around the country as states waited to see if the prevalent method of execution would pass constitutional muster with the Court. It did, by a convincing 7-2 margin, so presumably death row should be getting a little less crowded in the near future.

Probably a big factor in the decision was the fact that the method of lethal injection at issue has been devised with the goal of ensuring the quickest and most painless death possible. The three-drug cocktail administered during the procedure is supposed to 1) send the subject into a deep, deep state of unconsciousness, 2) completely paralyze the body, including the lungs, and 3) stop the heart. Although there is certainly no pleasant way to die (or kill), it seems the lethal injection method might be about as peaceful a demise as one could hope for.

But not everyone agrees. Critics point out that if the first drug is administered incorrectly the second drug could subject the prisoner to a “waking paralysis”, and the third drug, which stops the heart, is likely to be very painful to a conscious subject. The possibility does not seem so farfetched when you consider that the individuals administering the drugs are generally not medical professionals. (Few doctors are willing to violate their Hippocratic Oath, even in the interest of law and order.)

Perhaps it is an encouraging sign that we care enough about even the most wretched members of our society to at least have a debate about how to carry out their sentences in the least painful way we can devise. History shows us that most societies that have practiced capital punishment have not gone out of their way to make the convicted criminal comfortable. Quite the opposite, in fact.

For the most part, the more colorful ways of executing people (burning at the stake, crucifixion, etc.) have largely fallen out of style, and even the more repressive governments in modern times tend to favor more “humane” forms of execution, relatively speaking.

Here in the US we have gradually cycled through a number of methods over the years, each intended to be more civilized than the last. From hanging, to firing squads, to gas chambers, to electric chairs, to the current three-drug “cocktail”, we have tried to make capital punishment as quick and painless (for both the criminal and the observers) as possible.

But we may not be done with the fine-tuning just yet. Another suggested method that has been circulating for almost a decade is called nitrogen asphyxiation, wherein the subject is terminated as a result of breathing pure nitrogen. Nitrogen is an odorless, colorless gas that makes up 78% of the air we breathe. As such, a person who was breathing pure nitrogen would sense nothing unusual or suffer in any way, but would eventually lose consciousness and expire because his body was being deprived of oxygen.

In theory, at least, the individual would not experience any unpleasant sensations during the procedure, i.e. no feeling of suffocation or physical pain. The other big advantage would be that it would require no medical skill to administer the “lethal dose” of nitrogen – someone would simply have to put the breathing mask on the prisoner’s face and let him breathe from a tank of pure nitrogen.

I am sure that eventually we will come up with even more advanced ways of ending human life, such as instantly vaporizing individuals so that there is no pain, no awareness, not even a body to haul away afterwards. I suppose that technology marches on, in all areas. Whether or not that is ultimately a good thing is another question, for another time.