Product Code Database
A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a or asphyxiant gas is introduced. Poisonous agents used include hydrogen cyanide and carbon monoxide.
Most notably, during the Holocaust large-scale gas chambers designed for mass killing were used by Nazi Germany from the late 1930s, as part of the Aktion T4, and later for its genocide program.
More recently, escapees from North Korea have alleged executions to have been performed by gas chamber in prison camps, often combined with medical experimentation.
Beginning in 1939, gas chambers were used as part of Aktion T4, an "involuntary euthanasia" program under which the Nazis murdered people with physical and intellectual disabilities, whom the Nazis considered "unworthy of life". Experiments in the gassing of patients were conducted in October 1939 in occupied Poznań in Poland. Hundreds of prisoners were murdered by carbon monoxide poisoning in an improvised gas chamber. In 1940, gas chambers using bottled pure carbon monoxide were established at six killing centres in Germany. In addition to persons with disabilities, these centres were also used during Action 14f13 to murder prisoners transferred from concentration camps in Germany, Austria, and Poland. Concentration camp inmates continued to be murdered even after the euthanasia program was officially shut down in 1941.
During the invasion of the Soviet Union, mass executions by exhaust gas were performed by Einsatzgruppen using , trucks modified to divert engine exhaust into a sealed interior gas chamber.
Starting in 1941, gas chambers were used at extermination camps in Poland for the mass-murder of Jews, Romani people, and other victims of the Holocaust. Gas vans were used at the Chełmno extermination camp. The Operation Reinhard extermination camps at Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka used exhaust fumes from stationary . In search of more efficient killing methods, the Nazis experimented with using the hydrogen cyanide-based fumigation Zyklon B at the Auschwitz concentration camp. This method was adopted for mass-murder at the Auschwitz and Majdanek camps. Up to 6,000 victims were gassed with Zyklon B each day at Auschwitz.
Most extermination camp gas chambers were dismantled or destroyed in the last months of World War II as Soviet Union troops approached, except for those at Dachau, Sachsenhausen and Majdanek. One destroyed gas chamber at Auschwitz was reconstructed after the war to stand as a memorial.
On December 3, 1948, Miran Thompson and Sam Shockley were executed in the gas chamber at San Quentin State Prison for their role in the Battle of Alcatraz.
In 1957, Burton Abbott was executed as the governor of California, Goodwin J. Knight, was on the telephone to stay the execution.
Since the restoration of the death penalty in the United States in 1976, 11 executions by gas chamber have been conducted. Four were conducted in Mississippi, 2 in Arizona, 2 in California, 2 in North Carolina, and 1 in Nevada. The first execution via gas chamber since the restoration of the death penalty was in Nevada in 1979, when Jesse Bishop was executed for murder. The most recent execution via gas chamber was in 1999. By the 1980s, reports of suffering during gas chamber executions had led to controversy over the use of this method.
At the September 2, 1983, execution of Jimmy Lee Gray in Mississippi, officials cleared the viewing room after 8 minutes while Gray was still alive and gasping for air. The decision to clear the room while he was still alive was criticized by his attorney. In 2007, David Bruck, an attorney specializing in death penalty cases, said, "Jimmy Lee Gray died banging his head against a steel pole in the gas chamber while reporters counted his moans."
During the April 6, 1992, execution of Donald Harding in Arizona, it took 11 minutes for death to occur. The prison warden stated that he would quit if required to conduct another gas chamber execution. Following Harding's execution, Arizona voted that all persons condemned to death after November 1992 would be executed by lethal injection.
Following the execution of Robert Alton Harris in 1992, a federal court declared that "execution by lethal gas under the California protocol is unconstitutionally cruel and unusual." However, this decision was vacated after California amended its statute to allow death row inmates to choose between lethal injection and the gas chamber. By the late 20th century, most states had switched to methods considered to be more humane, such as lethal injection. California's gas chamber at San Quentin State Prison was converted to an execution chamber for lethal injection.
As of 2020, the last person to be executed in the gas chamber was German national Walter LaGrand, sentenced to death before 1992, who was executed in Arizona on March 3, 1999. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit had ruled that he could not be executed by gas chamber, but the decision was overturned by the United States Supreme Court. The gas chamber was formerly used in Colorado, Maryland, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina and Oregon. Seven states (Alabama, Arizona, California, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Wyoming) authorize lethal gas if lethal injection cannot be administered, the condemned committed their crime before a certain date, or the condemned chooses to die in the gas chamber. Alabama, Mississippi, and Oklahoma specify the nitrogen hypoxia method, Arizona specifies the hydrogen cyanide method, and the other states do not specify the type of gas. In October 2010, Governor of New York David Paterson signed a bill rendering gas chambers illegal for use by humane society and other animal shelters.
The condemned is advised to take several deep breaths to speed unconsciousness. Nonetheless, the condemned person often convulses and drools and may also urinate, defecate, and vomit. Encyclopedia of Capital Punishment in the United States, 2d ed. by Louis J. Palmer, Jr. (page 319) The Death Penalty As Cruel Treatment And Torture by William Schabas (page 194)
Following the execution the chamber is purged with air, and any remnant gas is neutralized with Ammonia, after which the body can be removed (with great caution, as pockets of gas can be trapped in the victim's clothing).
In April 2015, Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin approved a bill allowing nitrogen asphyxiation as an execution method. On March 14, 2018, Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter and Corrections Director Joe Allbaugh announced a switch to nitrogen gas as the state's primary method of execution. After struggling for years to design a nitrogen execution protocol, the State of Oklahoma announced in February 2020 that it was abandoning the project after finding a reliable source of drugs to carry out the lethal injection executions.
In 2018, Alabama approved nitrogen asphyxiation as an execution method and allowed death row inmates a choice of method. In September 2022, a court stayed the execution of Alan Eugene Miller, who was set to be executed by lethal injection. Miller asserted that he had chosen nitrogen hypoxia as his method of execution, as permitted by Alabama law, but the form documenting his choice had been lost. The court decided to stay the execution to allow for further investigation into his claim. On January 25, 2024, Kenneth Eugene Smith became the first person to be executed by nitrogen asphyxiation.
|
|
