Attorneys for Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58, filed an amended lawsuit challenging the proposed new execution method as a potential violation of the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. They asked a federal judge to issue a preliminary injunction to block the execution from going forward next year.
“There is sparse research on how long a human must be exposed to 100% pure nitrogen to cause death, what happens if a human is exposed to less than 100% pure nitrogen for a prolonged period of time, or on the pain or sensations that a human exposed to nitrogen might experience,” his attorneys wrote in the amended lawsuit filed Monday.
They noted in the filing that the American Veterinary Medical Association wrote in 2020 euthanasia guidelines that nitrogen hypoxia is an acceptable method of euthanasia for pigs but not other mammals because it could create an “anoxic environment that is distressing for some species.”
Sure, our body has excess CO2 detectors. The feeling of not getting enough air usually has very little to do with not enough oxygen, because there is a lot of oxygen in the air, much more than we need. It’s usually the excess CO2 detectors going off. This is also the reason we pant after holding our breath, the quick deep breaths help quickly lower the CO2 level.
For other gasses you are right. CO (Carbon monoxide) doesn’t trigger our CO2 detectors, which is why you can die so easily due to a faulty heater or something like that. Killing yourself by running a car in the garage also kills using CO, the body does not notice, you fall asleep and die.
A lot of other gasses also displace oxygen, without our bodies knowing. For example argon or even natural gas (methane). This is where the putting your head in the oven thing comes from. Back in the day there was pure gas in the pipes, so gassing yourself this way was easy. These days they mix in a lot of other stuff so it doesn’t work anymore.
The reason nitrogen is used is because it is cheap, easily available and non toxic. Regular air is almost all nitrogen, so the nitrogen itself isn’t the dangerous part, the dangerous part is the lack of oxygen. Since CO2 is still exhaled, the detectors don’t trigger and you die peacefully.