The GOP has some strong differences here that will be fun to watch

I've noted that at least one of the advocates for nitrogen suffocation, Christine Pappas, has identified as an opponent of capital punishment. This isn't as unlikely as it may seem.

In the late 1700s, Dr. Joseph-Ignate Guillotin, member of the French Assembly during the revolution, suggested the idea of using a decapitating machine to carry out the death penalty. Dr. Guillotin was on record as opposing capital punishment; but, he believed decapitation would be quicker and less painful than the cruel methods in use at the time.

Two myths to be exploded:

1. Dr. Guillotin didn't invent the guillotine, he just suggested using mechanized beheading to replace the then current methods. A Dr. Antoine Louis actually supervised the construction of the first guillotine, aided by German piano maker Tobias Schmidt.
   
2. Dr. Guillotin wasn't a victim of his machine; he died peacefully in bed, years after the Reign of Terror.

Jump ahead nearly a hundred years to 1881, when two developments came together to create the electric chair, the symbol of capital punishment for nearly a hundred years:

1. New York State was looking for an execution method to replace hanging, after a hanging was very badly botched hanging.
   
2. Thomas Edison was engaged in, what has become known as The War of Currents with George Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla over direct vs. alternating currents.

Edison claimed to be an opponent of the death penalty; however, he wanted to convince the public that alternating current was too dangerous to be used. When New York State considered electrocution as one possible method of execution, Edison was quick to suggest that prisoners be 'Westinghoused,' electrocuted using alternating current.

The first electric chair was actually constructed by Harold P. Brown and Arthur Kennelly, employees of Edison's company. Brown had already conducted public demonstrations where animals were 'Westinghoused,' by alternating current.

George Westinghouse refused to sell New York alternating current generators and transformers for use in executions. New York State obtained their equipment through third parties in South America. Westinghouse was a witness for the first execution in the electric chair in 1890, which was horribly botched, as many subsequent electrocutions were. Afterwards, he remarked: "They would have done better using an axe!"

The next chapter involves a young, idealistic Oklahoma state legislator, Bill Wiseman. Wiseman was an opponent of capital punishment; but, like Dr. Guillotin, he decided, perhaps unwisely, to suggest a more 'humane' method of execution. Lethal injection, as a method of capital punishment, had been suggested for nearly a century before the current three-drug protocol was developed by Dr. Jay Chapman, Oklahoma state medical examiner.

Bill Wiseman added an amendment to another bill in the state legislature authorizing lethal injection as the state's method of execution, replacing electrocution. Bill Wiseman was haunted by that decision for the rest of his life. He knew that making executions apparently clinical and painless, he had made it easier for juries to sentence people to death.

Even before the current round of notoriety about botched executions by lethal injection, there have been studies saying that many, if not most, victims are poorly anesthetized and probably are awake during the administration of the paralytic drug and the potassium chloride to stop the heart. The paralytic drug, pancuronium bromide, stops respiration; it also prevents the victim (in most cases!) from making distressing movements or crying out during the execution.

As stated, there is a long, dishonorable history of opponents of capital punishment trying to find more 'humane' methods of execution; usually it takes decades before we finally find out that the 'humane' method is actually a form of torture.