This is cruel and unusual punishment

[LetMyPeopleVote]

Link to tweet

[jimfields33]

1. The comments are crazy.

[redqueen]

3. I wish I hadn't looked.

Elon has turned that site into a cesspit.

[jimfields33]

5. Me too. Yep he has.

[Walleye]

2. The bad guys could never let go of the idea of hanging somebody.This is as close as they could get

It’s for a murder that happened something like 38 years ago?

[leftyladyfrommo]

13. It's always bothered me that the person they

execute is not the same person that committed the crime 30 years ago.

[Walleye]

14. I agree

[redqueen]

4. 22 minutes.

It is a absolutely cruel and unusual punishment.

I can't believe people support this.

[obamanut2012]

11. Me either

I am 100% against the DP, but JFC the firing squad and guillotine are way more humane than this.

[Lars39]

6. And this was their second attempt to kill him.

[NameAlreadyTaken]

7. Oh, Alabama

[rsdsharp]

8. They count funny. 1,3,4,5,6,8,9,10.

[Stinky The Clown]

12. I noticed that, too

Bamacounting?

[snot]

9. There must be a dozen ways to kill someone

with certainty and minimal suffering.

This isn't about justice.

[Calculating]

10. What the heck is wrong with the guillotine or just shooting them in the head?

instant and painless vs all these weird methods.

[beaglelover]

15. I don't understand why they don't put them out with Propofol and then inject them with a lethal dose of Morphine?

That would be a very humane way to administer the DP.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

16. Sotomayor dissents with 'deep sadness' from Alabama execution experiment

The execution by use of nitrogen gas was cruel and unusual punishment. The SCOTUS did not listen to Justice Sotomayor

Link to tweet

https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/alabama-nitrogen-gas-execution-supreme-court-dissent-rcna135824

The Supreme Court approved a human experiment Thursday in Alabama without bothering to explain why. The GOP-appointed majority’s order simply said, “The application for stay of execution of sentence of death presented to Justice Thomas and by him referred to the Court is denied. The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied.” That was all the state needed to go forward with its untested method of using nitrogen gas to kill Kenneth Smith, who, according to the Associated Press, reportedly appeared conscious for several minutes into the execution and, for at least two minutes, “appeared to shake and writhe on the gurney, sometimes pulling against the restraints.”

The only real words that the high court published on the matter came from the three Democratic appointees, mainly Justice Sonia Sotomayor. She noted that Smith, who was convicted of murdering Elizabeth Sennett in 1988, would be “the first person in this country ever to be executed in this way” and that “his executioners will not intervene and will not remove the mask, even if Smith vomits into it and chokes on his own vomit.” This wasn’t even the state’s first attempt at executing Smith: Alabama botched his 2022 lethal injection after the justices let that one go forward with another unexplained order over Democratic dissent.

“Twice now this Court has ignored Smith’s warning that Alabama will subject him to an unconstitutional risk of pain,” Sotomayor wrote, concluding her dissent with “deep sadness, but commitment to the Eighth Amendment’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment.” Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson added their own brief dissent in which they noted that the state hadn’t even provided Smith all the discovery requested about this new untested protocol.

And what was the majority’s rejoinder to this macabre recitation? Silence — continuing a disturbing theme of unexplained decisions in crucial cases, including ones like this where, as Sotomayor writes, “The world is watching.”