The drugs required for execution, on the other hand, are used because they appear to be the most reliable, peaceful and expedient method.
You can read more about it at http://www.peacefulpillhandbook.com/ - there are many terminally ill people who are trying to get their hands on these drugs.
If there are rescue teams coming in then I suppose that wouldn't work and you'd just wake up in Narcan hell. What are your choices then?
I'd suggest nitrogen asphyixiation. From what i've read, most folks who accidentally get exposed to 100% nitrogen atmospheres, don't even see it coming. Probably not that great for the execution witnesses as i'm sure you'd thrash about beforr dying.
For the record, I think we should abolish the death penalty, so I'm not supporting this option, just sharing the data.
In my misspent youth, I was once helping a friend with a project involving a couple of weather balloons full of helium. When he was done and we were cleaning up, I was playing around with breathing pure helium. One breath of pure helium was fine, and I followed it up with a second breath of pure helium, figuring I would feel hypoxia start to set in. It sets in fast and is actually euphoric. I remember saying "whoah" and realizing I was about to pass out, and I remember hearing my head hit the rubber floor I was sitting on. (I did sit down, since I realized there was a danger of my passing out.)
EDIT: I should point out that I used to be in favor of the death penalty, but now feel that it is usually little more than state-sponsored vengeance. I would like to see a cultural shift in America away from all forms of vengeance , and legitimizing vengeance against murders is worse than helping the families of murder victims realize that vengeance is neither necessary nor sufficient for closure.
If we as a society are determined to kill murderers, my experience suggests that breathing pure nitrogen would be one of the least barbaric ways to do so.
It pretty much comes down to the amount of risk the person wants to take that their attempt is a) successful b) quick and c) painless. Most people are afraid that they'll end up in a coma or severely brain damaged. Or if it is successful, people don't want their final moments to be gory with their head in a bag, vomiting profusely, thrashing around, etc.
On the contrary: "cruel and unusual punishment" is Constitutionally prohibited in the US. Execution itself hasn't been ruled out by this, but it is not allowed to cause extreme pain. The dependence on certain drugs seems to be because of "conservatively" designing the execution protocol to a) consistently cause quick death, and b) not be painful, for instance by causing unconsciousness.
There is evidence that some convicts were conscious. On the other hand, I skimmed some euthanasia protocols[0], and to a layman at least, they appear similar to the ones for execution in the US, so I'm not sure you're correct about it being pleasant for the euthanasia patients. Perhaps the euthanasia one I read is outdated and they have better ones. I think we're less likely to hear about possibly-painful euthanasia experiences as we are about possibly-painful executions, though.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lethal_injection#Euthanasia_pr...
Hopefully euthanasia patients will at least be monitored. They've struck me as more pleasant at least.
http://time.com/101143/lethal-injection-creator-jay-chapman-...
That it is failing and states haven't adjusted to something that might cause euphoria is in my view a bias to pain.
If you wanted to kill someone painfully, you could just skip straight to the potassium chloride. It would burn like hell and they would have a massive heart attack while fully conscious.
Can you provide backing for your statement?
Perhaps the method wasn't meant to cause pain, but the method makes few attempts to avoid it, particularly when considering similar alternatives. That it shouldn't cause the condemned to feel like their body is on fire for several minutes seems like a far cry from "must not cause pain."
This is absolutely not true.