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To: The Scott Trust
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bcc: Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall
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Subject: "Nitrogen Hypoxia": The Guardian, How bad can journalism get?
From: Dudley Sharp, independent researcher, death penalty expert, former opponent, 832-439-2113, CV at bottom
Preface
The GNM editorial code guidance A. Accuracy and objectivity
"Journalists should take care to be accurate. Significant errors must be corrected as soon as possible, and if a piece of journalism misleads, it should be clarified. Any significant corrections should be made through the readers’ editor. Journalists working in news should always strive to be fair and objective in their reporting, and recognise how their natural personal biases could affect that."
"Comment is free, but facts are sacred." CP Scott
Preface 2
This is a, fairly, standard piece, by the Guardian, meaning anti-death penalty one-sided, little to no independent research, if any, and little to no fact checking nor vetting of the facts presented, an obvious bias against any balance, a conscious effort to violate ethical standards, if thought was even necessary - at this juncture, it may be automatic.
The article is ludicrous, if journalism means anything. Does it?
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Method: I quote the article and, then, reply as Sharp.
1) Guardian: Title: ‘Astonishingly cruel’: Alabama seeks to test execution method on death row ‘guinea pig’
Sharp: The effects of nitrogen hypoxia, have been well known, for decades (1), see sucides, NASA, industrial accidents, etc. (1). Unconsciousness occurs within 12-18 seconds with a tube (1), or, likely, sooner with a mask (1), as planned, and, nearly instantaneous, in some of the industrial accidents (1), with death. most often, soon thereafter (1). The data is conclusive and consistent (1). There is no suffocation effect.
"Astonishing cruel" is the opposite of the known evidence.
2) Guardian: "Kenneth Smith is one of two living Americans who can describe what it is like to survive an execution, having endured an aborted lethal injection last November during which he was subjected to excruciating pain tantamount, his lawyers claim, to torture."
Sharp: Reality matters. Smith is one of countless millions or billions to have survived needle pricks. For perspective, look at the torture of the actual innocent murder victims.
3) Guardian: "If the state of Alabama has its way, he will become the test dummy for an execution method that has never before been used in judicial killings and which veterinarians consider unacceptable as a form of euthanasia for animals – death by nitrogen gas."
Sharp: Somehow, the Guardian "forgot" to mention that if Smith has his way, he will be executed by nitrogen hypoxia. Pretty huge omission. Nitrogen hypoxia is fine for some animals (2) , but not for others (2). Guardian forget that as well? If facts are sacred, the Guardian knows that the protocols for animals and homo sapiens are very different (1,2). Based upon the huge amount of evidence (1), nitrogen hypoxia will be fine for homo sapien murderers (1), which is why anti-death penalty folks are falling all over themselves to create a fictional response to its use.
4) Guardian: "The method, known as “nitrogen hypoxia”, theoretically works by replacing the oxygen breathed by the prisoner with nitrogen."
Sharp: Idiotic. It is not, remotely, theoretical (1). It is a fact that we know that is, exactly, how it works. All of the many, well known deaths, by nitrogen hypoxia (1), are because the displacement of oxygen, by nitrogen, was to a degree that caused unconsciousness and death (1), in the vast majority of cases. It is a well known fact that it works (1).
5) The Guardian states knowing that by:
Guardian: "In minutes that would reduce oxygen levels in the individual’s brain and other vital organs to fatally low levels, leading to death by suffocation."
Sharp: The evidence is that, after taking a full breath of nitrogen gas, that it will take 30 or less to become unconscious, not minutes. That is not theoretical, but a fact, EXCEPT for "by suffocation". There is no suffocation effect with nitrogen hypoxia (1). Where did the Guardian confirm there was suffocation? Pilkington? You become unconscious and you die, in the majority of cases. Not theoretical. A well known fact (1).
6) Guardian: "Death penalty experts have decried what is in effect a human experiment. The choice of Smith as the first candidate for the technique, less than a year after he experienced a failed execution, has also been criticized as a double violation of the eighth amendment protection against “cruel and unusual punishments”.
Sharp: Based upon this article, that would, most likely, be anti-death penalty experts who are as willfully ignorant and/or as, intentionally, misleading as is the Guardian. Why zero balance, intentionally, not including pro-death penalty experts? Pilkington? I know the answer. It is in within this reply.
7) Guardian: "In 2022, Smith was one of three Alabama death row inmates who suffered catastrophic lethal injection procedures. Officials spent hours unsuccessfully trying to set an intravenous line through which to pump the drugs into him."
Sharp: "!!!Catastrophic!!!" needle pricks.
Multiple needle pricks, for any IV process, are very well known as necessary with those who have vein issues, inclusive of those caused by lifestyle, as with diet, lack of exercise, IV drug use, obesity - all conditions, well known for those living a life of criminal activity, as well as intentional obesity, intentional dehydration and intentional lack of exercise, a collective, intentional effort to thwart the execution process, as well as with various medical conditions, not connected to lifestyle or those intentional efforts, as well as by an incompetent IV techs.
8) Guardian: "Earlier that year, the state took more than three hours to kill Joe Nathan James and later abandoned the execution of Alan Miller after also failing to find a vein. An inquiry was held into the string of disasters, but resulted in no meaningful changes."
Sharp: "!!!DISASTROUS!!!" needle pricks.
Untrue, of course, as Alabama has detailed with the media, new execution staff have been added, including a pool of medical professionals, new equipment has been added and more rehearsals have been added and the execution team will be provided more time to complete its duties and they have an additional method of execution, as well.
These are the exact, meaningful changes that anyone would expect. The factual opposite of "no meaningful changes". It is plain, the intention of the Guardian's article.
Will the Guardian make all the meaningful changes in their reporting, to avoid such disasters in the future? Pilkington?
My guess? They Guardian cares enough NOT to make changes.
9) Guardian: "Maya Foa, a joint executive director of Reprieve, the human rights group, said “Alabama has tortured Kenneth Smith once already, strapping him down and stabbing him with needles for more than an hour in a failed attempt to kill him. It is astonishingly reckless and cruel to try again using an untested execution method that has every chance of causing terrible suffering,”
Sharp: As willfully ignorant and/or as misleading, as the Guardian. There is no difference between Foa and the Guardian, because that is the intended lack of balance. "!!!TORTURE!!!" with needle pricks. Foa, will you present the evidence of "terrible suffering with this method? Pilkington?
10) Guardian: "Foa added that Alabama’s new published protocol for death-by-nitrogen was “alarmingly vague – officials evidently don’t know what they are doing and are hoping for the best. The state is treating a human being like a guinea pig in a laboratory and calling it justice.”
Sharp: False. It is not vague, at all, as detailed, from the known facts and from the Guardian:
11) Guardian: "The protocol includes a brief passage on nitrogen hypoxia that has large sections hidden from public view. “This is a vague, sloppy, dangerous and unjustifiably deficient protocol made all the more incomprehensible by heavy redaction in the most important places,” " The details given are so vague, that it leaves experts to “only speculate about how a state might conduct a nitrogen hypoxia execution” "the placement of a mask on a prisoner’s face “is especially puzzling – what if the inmate tries to take it off, immediately or during the procedure?” said Deborah Denno, a law professor at the Fordham University law school who has done pioneering research on execution methods."
Sharp: Quite the pioneer. Denno believes that the murderer will be able to reach up and take the mask off. Really? Dunno is unaware that the arms and body will be secured, with a system, securing the head.
Even the Guardian has to find both Denno's and Foe's description idiotic.How do we know? Because the Guardian describes the protocol, here:
"The protocol, the first that a state has released publicly for nitrogen, indicates that the gas will be pumped into Smith through a “mask assembly”, which will be connected to “breathing gas tubing”. “The mask will be placed and adjusted on the condemned inmate’s face”, it says, and then after the prisoner has been allowed to make a final statement “the Warden will activate the nitrogen hypoxia system”. The gas will be passed through the mask into the prisoner for 15 minutes, or for five minutes beyond the moment that he flatlines, whichever is longer, the protocol says."
That is the complete protocol with nitrogen hypoxia. It is that simple, as we, already knew from the tube experiment and with suicides (1), one of which used a mask (1). The murderers head, arms, legs, hands and body will be secured, on the lethal injection platform, I suspect. The, only, addition, would be a restraint on the head, when using a mask.
12) Guardian: "Joel Zivot, a professor of anesthesiology and an expert in lethal injections at Emory University, said that even the term “nitrogen hypoxia” was a misnomer. “Hypoxia means low in oxygen, so someone has combined that with nitrogen and called it a thing. Medically, it’s not a thing – there is no such thing as nitrogen hypoxia. It’s a made-up term,” Zivot said.
Sharp: The Guardian gets three well known anti-death penalty people, none of which are identified as anti-death penalty, within the article., and the Guardian got nothing but nonsense from them.
13) Guardian: "Zivot believes the phrase is being used to normalize an untried killing method. “It creates a false sense that it is medically endorsed, which it is not."
Sharp: Laughable. It is a well known killing method, for many decades (1). For medical professionals, who approves of suicides, I can see no reason why they would disapprove of nitrogen hypoxia.
Possibly, Zivot can understand this:
Hypoxia can be caused by different things"
- Anaemia, a condition caused by a reduced amount of functional hemoglobin, reducing the oxygen-carrying capacity of blood,
- Heart diseases and lung diseases such as COPD, Emphysema, Bronchitis, Pulmonary edema
- Carbon monoxide poisoning
- inert gases such as argon, helium, nitrogen, which can displace the oxygen
Which can be called hypoxia by anemia, or anemia hypoxia, hypoxia by carbon monoxide or carbon monoxide hypoxia, hypoxia by nitrogen or nitrogen hypoxia, Simple, basic. Why Zivot had a hard time with this is not a mystery.
14) Guardian: "Zivot suggested, was that Alabama had no idea whether nitrogen could be used to kill Smith without him suffering a cruel and unusual punishment banned under the US constitution. “They have no clear understanding of what they’re supposed to be doing, and yet they are satisfied with scant anecdotal pieces of information for the highest, most serious form of punishment,” he said."
Sharp: All of that is, obviously, intentionally false (1). I consider Zivot an anti-death penalty activist, who happens to have an MD. Not much imagination needed.
I can see why the Guardian found Foa, Denno and Zivot such informed experts for your story. They have so informed your readers (, as planned?).
15) Guardian: "Nitrogen has been approved as an execution method by three states: Alabama, Mississippi and Oklahoma." " By contrast, euthanasia guidelines produced by the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), which represents 100,000 veterinarians in the US, reject nitrogen hypoxia for almost all mammals. The gas creates an environment devoid of oxygen that is “distressing for some species”.
Sharp: All the evidence is that, with the species homo sapiens, there is no distress (1) caused by the nitrogen hypoxia method. AVMA is speaking of mass killings in rooms, not masks, and in an atmosphere of <2% oxygen, when, instead, in human executions, a mask will have an atmosphere of 0% oxygen and 100% nitrogen.
A completely different species and a completely different protocol, than with AVMA. Obvious.
In Closing
I find the Guardian article to be inaccurate and misleading. Ask yourself: How could this not be intentional? See Preface.
If you find anything I have written to be, factually, in error or misleading, I will be more than happy to review it.
This will likely rebut much of the information in your prior death penalty stories (3). I hope you will use it for fact checking/vetting, for the Guardians future death penalty articles and that you will contact the five pro-death penalty experts, therein (3).
FN
1) Nitrogen Gas; Flawless, proven, peaceful, unrestricted method of execution
2) M1.5 NITROGEN, ARGON, p 27-28, AVMA Guidelines for the Euthanasia of Animals: 2020 Edition
3) Research, w/sources, w/fact checking/vetting & critical thinking, as required of everyone.
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