Couldn't have said it better myself. I for one personally believe that capitol punishment is inherently inhumane and shouldn't be practiced in a functional contemporary society.

That said, nitrogen asphyxiation is by far one of the most humane execution methods employed today and, on paper, shouldn't cause the victim any pain, discomfort or distress. If you actually look at the symptoms of nitrogen narcosis and hypoxia you'll see that pretty clearly.

In this case, as the article explains, the victims suffering was self inflicted as a result of stress, distress, and previous medical conditions.

To paraphrase the article, a previously botched execution via lethal injection years before resulted in ongoing nausea. The man expressed concern that this could cause him to vomit in the nitrogen mask which could have caused him to drown in his own vomit so he was starved for 10 hours prior to prevent this from happening.

During the actual execution, the victim reportedly attempted to hold his breath as long as he could before struggling against his restraints for as long has he retained consciousness. This is just a stress response to being executed, not a side effect of the execution method. It's not an uncommon reaction to various other execution methods like gas chambers or lethal injection.

If you want inhumane execution methods, lethal injections are often botched and typically in extremely painful and torturous ways.

Arguably, the most humane, quickest, and most reliable painless method would probably be something like the guillotine but I'd be surprised if that got widespread support.

Again, by no means do I support capitol punishment but as execution methods go, this is probably the most humane way we've tried so far.