Canada and the World
Current Events with a Canadian Perspective
Last update
27 November 2010
Execution in a Gas Chamber
Gassing condemned prisoners with cyanide
has gone out of style in favour of lethal injections;
that’s a good thing
The earliest historical records contain evidence of capital punishment. It was mentioned in the Code of Hammurabi (1750 BCE). The Bible says that death is an appropriate penalty for more than 30 different crimes. The Draconian Code of ancient Greece imposed capital punishment for every offence.
Execution a Common Method of Dealing with Crime
By the end of the 15th century, English law recognized seven major crimes for which
the penalty might be death: 
treason, murder, larceny, burglary, rape, and arson.
By 1800, more than 200 crimes could get a person hanged.
In Canada, in 1859, the state claimed the right to bump off ne’er-
Hydrogen Cyanide Used in U.S. Gas Chambers
Very few countries have used gassing as a method for killing condemned prisoners, the United States being the most prominent exception.
Deathpenaltyinfo.org says, “In 1924, the use of cyanide gas was introduced as Nevada sought a more humane way of executing its inmates. Gee Jon was the first person executed by lethal gas. The state tried to pump cyanide gas into Jon’s cell while he slept.”
This didn’t work because the cell was not sealed and the gas leaked out. This led to the construction of sealed gas chambers.
Gassing Inflicts Pain and Suffering on the Subject
A famous execution took place in San Quentin’s gas chamber (right) on June 3, 1955
when Barbara Graham was put to death.
Her life and crimes are described by capitalpunishmentuk.org.
Death-
She died easily unlike some gas chamber victims.” Two films, both with the title I Want to Live, were made about Barbara Graham’s life.
Witnesses to Gas Chamber Executions
Those who have witnessed a gas chamber execution say it’s clearly very distressing and probably very painful for the condemned person.
Actor Mike Farrell and President of Death Penalty Focus describes the process in a video.
The cyanide gas causes a choking death. It took Jimmy Lee Gray more than eight minutes
to expire in the Mississippi gas chamber in 1983. Suffocating and purple-
Deathpenaltyinfo.org quotes former San Quentin, California, warden, Clifton Duffy, as saying, “At first there is evidence of extreme horror, pain, and strangling. The eyes pop. The skin turns purple and the victim begins to drool.”
Gas Chamber Called Cruel and Unusual Punishment
Descriptions such as these were used by advocates for abolition of the death penalty to take their pleas to U.S. Courts.
The last person executed in a gas chamber was Walter LaGrand, whose case is described by executedtoday.com.
This execution took place despite a decision by a federal judge in 1994 that the method violated the Eight Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that persons not be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment.
“Shortly before Walter LaGrand’s scheduled execution,” wrote Matthias Lehmphul (March 3, 2008), “the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay whose logic would have banned lethal gas forever. This was overruled by the U.S. Supreme Court, leaving it as it remains today.”
Gas chamber executions are still possible in Arizona, California, Maryland, Missouri, and Wyoming. However, given the certainty of a legal challenge the method is unlikely ever to be used again.
Image credit
Andrew Dunn
Sources
“Might we Make Executions more Civilized Please?” Neil Macdonald, CBC News, November 7, 2007.
“The Agony of the Executioner.” Patrick Cain, Toronto Star, May 20, 2007.
© Canada and the World, November 2010
All rights reserved
NO PITY
FOR JIMMY LEE
In 1984, CBC journalist Neil Macdonald interviewed T. Berry Bruce, the Mississippi state executioner who put Jimmy Lee Gray to death while intoxicated.
Gray had raped and murdered a three-
In 2007, Macdonald, who clearly found the gassing of Gray barbaric, reported that Bruce thought Gray got what he deserved in the botched execution: “Besides,” wrote Macdonald, “there was a certain symmetry to the executioner’s logic: The state had decided Jimmy Lee Gray should die. Killing folks is messy. So what if he suffered? He sure didn’t suffer any more than his victim.”
THE EXECUTIONERS
Many of the people whose job it is to carry out the death penalty have had a difficult time later. A few have committed suicide, others, such as Canada’s John Radclive became alcoholics. Some, such as Britain’s Albert Pierrepoint, were not been bothered by their trade at all.
In his book 2001 book The Last Face You’ll Ever See: The Private Life of the American Death Penalty, journalist Ivan Solotaroff looked into the lives of U.S. executioners.
In Mississippi’s Donald Hocutt he found a man broken by the after-
Capital Punishment U.K. writes that “Between 1924 and 1999, 587 men and 7 women were put to death in the gas chambers of various American states.”
The story of one of them, Edward Earl Johnson, is told in the 1987 BBC documentary Fourteen Days in May. The video follows closely the last few days of Johnson’s life.
He proclaimed his innocence throughout his eight years incarceration and, in a follow-
Gassing has never been used in the judicial execution of criminals in any country other than the United States.
Cyanide gas, under the trade name Zyklon B, was used by the Nazis to murder millions, of Jews, Roma, and others in the gas chambers of the Holocaust during the 1930s and ‘40s.