No Execution is Painless Enough
No Execution is Painless Enough
Tim O’Connor – Center for the Preservation of Humanity – 9/26/2022
This is an article about two men on death row in Alabama. One had his sentence carried out and is no longer upon the earth. The other is awaiting his turn. Because of the difficulties which presented themselves in the execution of the deceased, Alabama has decided to use a different method of execution. In the meantime, some folks from academia got together to subvert the US justice system by appealing to the United Nations to come ‘fix’ Alabama’s problems with executing prisoners.
First, the deceased. On August 15, 1994 Joe Nathan James, Jr. murdered Faith Hall. The two had previously dated one another but were no longer seeing one another. For several months prior to the murder James stalked Hall. On the evening of the murders Hall and a friend saw James coming and ran inside the friend’s apartment. James forced entry into the apartment, and Hall attempted to flee outside when James fired a pistol at her and missed. Hall attempted to hide in a bathroom after being shot at; however, James followed and shot her in the head, chest, and abdomen. Hall died from her wounds. James fled from Alabama to California where he was arrested.
James was found guilty of the murder as well as charges of burglary. Because James was committing a burglary at the time of the murder, he was sentenced to death. That was in 1996. In 1999 he was again sentenced to death because he had to be retried after an appeals court ordered hearsay evidence be allowed. 23 years later he was finally executed by the State of Alabama despite pleas from Faith Hall’s surviving children (who were 3 and 6 at the time of her murder), and her younger brother, who asked the governor to commute the sentence to life in prison with no possibility of parole. Faith Hall’s family members did not attend the execution. James, for his part, attempted to postpone his execution by claiming he had pending court cases (all of his appeals were dismissed) and requesting that instead of being executed by lethal injection he be executed by nitrogen hypoxia. Alabama has no procedure, as of yet, to conduct executions by nitrogen hypoxia.
The other convicted murderer, still on death row, is Allan Eugene Miller. On August 5, 1999, Miller, a truck driver who was, at the time, laid off from his job, went to his place of work and murdered two co-workers and a dispatcher by shooting them. It was explained in the trial that Miller’s murder spree was an act of revenge and jealousy because he felt his co-workers and the dispatcher spread rumors about him. He was also jealous of his co-workers because he didn’t have the ‘good’ route.
The defense Miller put on was one of mental disease or defect. His defense suggested he be placed in a mental institution instead of prison. Instead, Miller was sentenced to death on July 31, 2000. It is conspicuous that Miller committed his murders a week after a similar incident occurred in Atlanta where an investor, Mark O. Barton, murdered nine and wounded 13 before killing himself – it is highly probable that this was a copycat event. Nonetheless, Miller was scheduled to make history by being the first person executed by nitrogen hypoxia on September 22, 2022.
Alabama, still not ready to use nitrogen hypoxia as an execution method, switched Miller’s method to lethal injection a week prior. There was an injunction against Alabama using any execution method other than nitrogen hypoxia on Miller. The injunction was not lifted until about 9 pm on September 22. With only three hours left in the day, Alabama was not able to establish an IV before the warrant ran out. As a result, early on the morning of September 23 the execution was called off and will be rescheduled.
There are three academics involved. Jon Yorke, Professor of Human Rights and the Director of the Centre for Human Rights, School of Law, Birmingham City University comes from the United Kingdom. Yorke, a so-called death-penalty ‘expert,’ wants there to be no death penalties anywhere for anything apparently.
Joel Zivot, Associate Professor of Anesthesiology and Surgery, Emory University School of Medicine, is at least in the United States. He is very concerned about the pain inmates experience during their executions, especially due to pulmonary edema.
The third academic is also a US citizen. Deborah Denno, Arthur A. McGivney Professor of Law and the Director of the Neuroscience and Law Center, Fordham University Law School is also hopeful to achieve the abolition of the death penalty.
It took a little bit, but the stage is set. When Joe Nathan James was placed in the execution chair it took staff three hours to get a vein, as Slate reported. Slate, of course, forgetting that Joe Nathan James, after shooting Faith Hall twice which knocked her to the ground, placed his gun to the top of her head and pulled the trigger once more, wrote:
“Right from the start there were serious problems with the James execution. Death was delayed for three hours as corrections officers tried, outside of public view, to find a useable vein to insert the IV line. During that time, we don’t know exactly how many times, or where, James was jabbed with a needle.”
There were serious problems with James committing murder, but Slate didn’t have that much to say about that, just that the two dated and James stalked her for months. No, James’ being stabbed with a needle was Slate’s problem. It is also something the three ‘academics’ took offense at.
Yorke, Zivot, and Denno put together a complaint to appeal to the United Nations. Specifically, they sent their complaint off to UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions. They did this on September 12, 2022 on behalf of Alan Eugene Miller. They extensively used the execution of Joe Nathan James as their basis.
The trio took offense at the three hours it took correction staff to find James’ vein, the ‘cut-down’ procedure used to find the vein, and the pulmonary edema which ultimately ended James’ life. They claim Alabama tortured James, suggest international rules be applied to executions in the United States, appeal to the Declaration of Universal Rights, and that, as a result of James’ execution and the torture he suffered, Miller’s execution be stayed. Specifically, the complaint reads, in part:
“It would be appropriate under international human rights law for the execution of Mr. Alan Eugene Miller to be suspended until Alabama is able to adequately review its execution protocol. We therefore respectfully request that in accordance with your Special Procedure mandates under Human Rights Council resolutions, that appropriate interventions are made in this case with the State of Alabama and the US Secretary of State.”
These three are suggesting something asinine and calling it appropriate. Their point really has nothing to do with James nor Miller. They are using the two to push their own agenda – end all executions for everything. So they are going to war against execution by lethal injection by claiming it is torture and asking the UN to do something about it. That ‘something’ is to have the UN put pressure on Anthony Blinken’s State Department to put pressure on Alabama state officials. That’s asinine. Of course the US regime currently occupying the levers of power in the United States is always eager to prostrate themselves to whatever the UN asks of them. That’s what these two traitors and a foreigner are counting on.
And that is why, Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Alabama decided that they will allow a procedure called nitrogen hypoxia for executions. I offer the following quote to explain what the procedure entails and how these ‘academic’ types operate:
“There is nitrogen gas—that’s a real thing. There’s hypoxia—that means low oxygen,” Zivot says. “But ‘nitrogen hypoxia’ is a made-up two-word expression meant to sound like you’re on the bridge of the starship Enterprise,” he says, referring to the spaceship of Star Trek fame. Instead Zivot recommends calling the procedure “nitrogen gas execution.”
“Nitrogen is an inert gas that makes up 78 percent of the air we breathe, passing in and out of the body harmlessly with every breath. A person can breathe pure nitrogen and not immediately realize there is a problem, but their cells and organs are slowly being deprived of the oxygen needed to function and will rapidly start to break down. Someone deprived of oxygen will pass out in minutes and die soon after when the heart stops beating, according to Zivot.”
Oh? You don’t say, Zivot? The death sentence is served because the procedure is lethal? Suffocation sounds like a really ugly way to go, but these people had no regard for human life to begin with. After they committed their acts and were arrested they had 227 months of life to live, on average (in 2020), before they were executed. Zivot, like his accomplices, is going after the methods of execution to make it impossible to carry out any execution.
These types will never stop their quest to end all state-sponsored executions. Appealing to the UN, in my opinion, is treason. I see the State of Alabama having done nothing wrong. When murderers are sentenced to death I think they should actually be put down in the exact same way they murdered their victims. If there are multiple victims I think we should pick whichever one was the most painful and mete the justice out to the murderer. I can only imagine what the anti-death penalty crowd would have to say about those ideas. They will, no doubt, hoot and hooler about those ideas – but hey, murderers don’t usually commit their deeds by lethal execution, gas chambers, hanging, or firing squad, so all current forms of execution would be thrown right out the window and these people should have nothing whatsoever to complain about. If it was good enough for the victim(s) to endure, it only sounds just to mete justice out to the convict this way.
Of course, we live in a world where hooking asthmatics up to diesel exhausts is scientific, unborn babies are ripped apart by forcepts in the womb for profit, and getting yearly gene therapy shots and the resulting childhood heart attack epidemic is our new normal. There are all kinds of ways to kill people. Death does not sound like it is really all that pleasant – it sounds painful. It sounds like it will be terrifying because when it happens we all probably know it’s happening. Those that choose to end the life of another, are prosecuted, found guilty, sentenced to death, have the sentence stand up to every appeal available, and are finally executed do not deserve some peaceful death while they sleep. The EPA can hook these people up to diesel engines. The body part industry can start hacking their arms and legs off. Moderna can use them as their lab rats. Again, I can only wonder what the anti-execution-of-murderers crowd would say about those ideas. If you happen to know one, send this article to them – I haven’t gotten any hate mail recently.
Bless God and God Bless.