A Texas man who unsuccessfully challenged the safety of the state’s lethal injection drugs and raised questions about evidence used to persuade a jury to sentence him to death for killing an elderly woman decades ago was executed late Tuesday.
Jedidiah Murphy, 48, was pronounced dead after an injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville for the October 2000 fatal shooting of 80-year-old Bertie Lee Cunningham of the Dallas suburb of Garland. Cunningham was killed during a carjacking.
“To the family of the victim, I sincerely apologize for all of it,” Murphy said while strapped to a gurney in the Texas death chamber and after a Christian pastor, his right hand on Murphy’s chest, prayed for the victim’s family, Murphy’s family and friends and the inmate.
“I hope this helps, if possible, give you closure,” Murphy said.
The effects of hypoxia are widely understood, it’s happened to pilots more than enough times. You get blissfully happy as oxygen levels go down, your brain starts slowing down and your speech might slow also. Then you just pass out and die peacefully. So, while you might have anxiety initially, it would likely go away as the effects started.
Sounds a bit like Deadpool lol. I think “getting the ratios just right” must involve messing with the air pressure somehow. If you have pure nitrogen circulating through an otherwise sealed chamber at atmospheric pressure then this won’t be an issue.
The bigger issue would actually be protecting everyone else. Nitrogen is very hazardous, because it’s stored in a cold liquid state and when it boils it violently expells the air in any space. I used to have to fill this big tank, put it in an elevator, press the button then step out and take the stairs because it was too risky riding the elevator with it. That’s also the reason we don’t use it for pigs, meanwhile CO2 is heavier than air so you can just have elevated walkways above open CO2 pits.