The Gas Chamber, 100 Years of Cruelty

100 years in the past this month, the primary fuel chamber execution was carried out in the US. On February 8, 1924, the state of Nevada used cyanide fuel to place Gee Jon to dying.

In a merciless twist of historical past, in January of this yr the state of Alabama revived using fuel when it put Kenneth Smith to dying. Over the course of the hundred years that separated Jon’s and Smith’s executions, the historical past of the fuel chamber, as I famous in Ugly Spectacles: Botched Executions and America’s Demise Penalty, has been marked by claims that it might present a painless dying and an extended sequence of failures to dwell as much as that promise.

Like each different technique of execution used on this nation, execution by deadly fuel has not been secure, dependable, or humane.

The street to the primary use of the fuel chamber started on August 28, 1921, at eight within the morning, when Tom Quong Kee was discovered useless from a single gunshot. Two days earlier Jon and Hughie Sing had traveled to the small city the place Kee lived.

Quickly after Kee’s dying, the native sheriff acquired a tip about two strangers who had been seen strolling across the city. The tip recognized Jon and Sing as members of a Chinese language gang who had been despatched to hold out successful on Kee.

Sing confessed and implicated Jon. Later they have been each sentenced to dying below Nevada’s dying penalty legislation that licensed deadly fuel because the state’s technique of execution.

That legislation, identified on the time it was adopted because the Humane Execution Invoice, handed the state meeting virtually unanimously earlier than being despatched on to the state senate the place it was permitted the exact same day. Nevada’s governor, Emmet Boyle, a longtime opponent of capital punishment, however signed the invoice into legislation.

The invoice that Boyle signed initially known as for executions to happen whereas the condemned slept of their cell. Demise row inmates could be housed in hermetic, leakproof cells, separate from different prisoners. On the day of the execution, valves could be open that might fill the cell with fuel, killing the sleeping prisoner painlessly.

The thought of utilizing fuel to execute prisoners might be traced again to 1791 when one of many commanders in Napoleon Bonaparte’s navy crammed a ship stuffed with insurgent slaves with sulfur dioxide fuel, killing all of them. Within the late nineteenth century, legislators and activists disillusioned with hanging as a technique of execution started to contemplate whether or not fuel could be a greater different.

For instance, members of the Pennsylvania medical society really useful that the state undertake carbonic acid to be used in its executions. Dr. J. Chris Lange stated that in an execution by deadly fuel, “dying will occur in from 3 to eight minutes after the fuel ascends to a degree with the mouth and nostril of the prisoner.”

He claimed that it might result in dying “with out preliminaries” and “with out the potential of accidents” and would “go away the legal little extra to dread of the longer term within the widespread lot of all mankind.”

Whereas Pennsylvania didn’t find yourself adopting the fuel chamber, curiosity on this technique grew within the late 1800s and the primary twenty years of the 1900s. It was spurred on by the expertise of World Warfare I, during which deadly fuel was a brand new and cutting-edge weapon.

By the point Nevada bought round to executing Gee Jon, it had deserted the thought of gassing an inmate in his cell. As an alternative, a concrete constructing within the jail yard, beforehand the jail barbershop, was transformed into the nation’s first fuel chamber.

As a report from the Demise Penalty Data Middle says, “The fuel chamber, which was constructed by prisoners, was first examined on two kittens, who died inside 15 seconds of the fuel launch.’

On the day of his execution, Jon was put to dying by hydrocyanic acid. However his execution didn’t go easily.

Hydrocyanic acid solely turns into gaseous and lethal at roughly 79°F. Nevada’s plan was to pump the fuel, which had been dropped at the jail in its extra secure liquid kind, into the chamber the place a heating machine was left to heat the liquid because it entered the chamber.

Sadly, the morning of February 8, 1924 was chilly, and the heater contained in the chamber malfunctioned. The fuel spilled into the chamber in each liquid and gaseous kind, pooling on the ground and spreading by way of the air.

A number of minutes into the execution, Jon was nonetheless respiration. His head rolled again and fell ahead numerous occasions earlier than he finally succumbed.

Afterward, as The Washington Put up notes, “No post-mortem was carried out out of concern that fuel in Gee’s physique would poison onlookers.”

Nonetheless, state officers insisted that the execution “was a hit.” A headline in The Nevada State Journal learn, “Nevada’s novel dying legislation is upheld by the best courtroom — humanity.”

Over the course of the following few many years, different states adopted Nevada’s instance and adopted the fuel chamber. Arizona turned the primary state to take action when it changed hanging with this new expertise of dying, and Colorado quickly did the identical.

In 1935, North Carolina and Wyoming constructed their very own fuel chambers. Two years later, California, Missouri, and Oregon adopted swimsuit. In the course of the Fifties, Mississippi, Maryland, and New Mexico all carried out executions by deadly fuel.

In its 100-year historical past, probably the most well-known fuel chamber execution happened in California in 1960 when Caryl Chessman was killed at San Quentin State Jail. Chessman had been sentenced to dying for a sequence of crimes he dedicated in January 1948 within the Los Angeles space.

Whereas in jail, he wrote 4 books, together with his memoirs Cell 2455, Demise Row, which was made right into a film in 1955.

“From Oregon to North Carolina,” The Washington Put up observes, “prisons developed distinctive protocols akin to coating a fuel chamber doorway with Vaseline to maintain the fuel in and patting down an inmate’s hair and garments after executions to get the fuel out so nobody bought sick whereas dealing with the physique. Some prisoners have been shaved and stripped to their underwear to decrease the chance.”

However regardless of these efforts, deadly fuel, which has been used greater than 600 occasions over its 100-year historical past, has not lived as much as its billing as a humane execution technique. Actually, greater than 5% of executions by fuel have been botched, making it the second most problematic execution technique after deadly injection, which has a botch fee of 8%.

Whereas the U.S. Supreme Courtroom has by no means dominated on the constitutionality of deadly fuel, in 1996 a federal appeals courtroom unanimously held that California’s statute authorizing deadly fuel violated the Eighth Modification. Because the courtroom stated, “The district courtroom’s findings of maximum ache, the size of time this excessive ache lasts, and the substantial threat that inmates will endure this excessive ache for a number of minutes require the conclusion that execution by deadly fuel is merciless and strange.”

We discovered that lesson another time earlier this yr throughout Alabama’s botched execution of Kenneth Smith.

Actually, regardless of the specific form of fuel that has been used, as legislation professor Deborah Denno notes, “Each fuel execution concerned torture of some kind…. The inmate is aware and conscious of what’s occurring, and the torment is clear.” As its 100-year historical past reveals, dying by deadly fuel, as Denno rightly concludes, is “the worst technique of execution we’ve ever had and probably the most merciless.”