SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
A Zyklon B container is displayed at the KL Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp museum in Poland. (Photo: Michael Hanke/WikiMedia Commons)
Arizona Plans Executions With Same Gas Used by Nazis at Auschwitz
"Let that sink in for a minute," said Sister Helen Prejean, a prominent death penalty abolitionist. "Then take action."
Jun 01, 2021
Death penalty abolitionists have expressed shock in recent days following the revelation that Arizona officials are preparing to execute death row inmates using hydrogen cyanide, the same gas with which the Nazis killed over a million people during the Holocaust under the trade name Zyklon B.
"You have to wonder what Arizona was thinking in believing that in 2021 it is acceptable to execute people in a gas chamber with cyanide gas. Did they have anybody study the history of the Holocaust?"
--Robert Dunham, DPIC
Documents obtained by The Guardian show that Arizona's Republican-controlled Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation, and Reentry (ADCRR) has spent $2,000 to obtain the materials needed to make cyanide gas, including a brick of potassium cyanide purchased last December for $1,530, as well as sodium hydroxide pellets and sulfuric acid.
The documents also revealed that the state's gas chamber at Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence--which was built in 1949 and hasn't been used to kill anyone in 22 years--has been "refurbished."
The Guardian called some of the techniques used to test the death chamber's efficacy "astonishingly primitive," including checking its air-tightness by lighting a candle and holding it up against a sealed door and windows.
The last Arizona gas chamber execution stands as a cautionary tale for death row inmates facing the choice of whether to die by gassing or lethal injection. In March 1999, Walter LeGrand, a German national, took 18 minutes to die as he suffered what an eyewitness described as "agonizing choking and gagging" in a cloud of cyanide vapor.
On April 6, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich announced the state was ready to resume killing prisoners, and that he would ask the state Supreme Court to begin issuing execution warrants. Brnovich's announcement came a month after ADCRR said it had obtained a supply of the lethal injection drug pentobarbital. The Guardian reported in April that Arizona officials spent $1.5 million to acquire pentobarbital from an undisclosed source.
This single-drug execution method causes victims to endure "excruciating suffering, including sensations of drowning and suffocation," according to anesthesiology expert Dr. Gail Van Norman.
As Common Dreams reported at the time, the last inmate executed by lethal injection in Arizona took nearly two hours to die. Joseph Wood, who was killed in July 2014, gulped and snorted hundreds of times as 15 shots of an experimental mix of midazolam and hydromorphone coursed through his veins.
States have been accused of using condemned prisoners as human guinea pigs as they experiment with substitute lethal injection drugs amid growing refusal by companies to sell their products for use in executions.
Wood's botched execution prompted a temporary suspension of capital punishment in Arizona, as lawyers for condemned convicts and human rights defenders argued such killings violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.
According to The Guardian, officials have selected two of Arizona's 115 death row inmates as likely candidates for killing once executions resume. Joseph Perkovich, an attorney for Frank Atwood, one of the candidates, told the paper that "neither option"--gassing or lethal injection--"is tenable." Perkovich said a discrepancy between the potassium cyanide obtained by corrections officials and the sodium cyanide called for under state execution protocol "is not a small detail."
"The specific compound is vitally important," he stressed.
Anti-death penalty campaigners have sounded the alarm over Arizona's plan to kill prisoners using the same gas with which the Nazis murdered (pdf) around 1.1 million people in extermination camps including Auschwitz.
"This is not justice--it's horrifying," the ACLU tweeted.
"You have to wonder what Arizona was thinking in believing that in 2021 it is acceptable to execute people in a gas chamber with cyanide gas," Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) executive director Robert Dunham told The Guardian. "Did they have anybody study the history of the Holocaust?"
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Death penalty abolitionists have expressed shock in recent days following the revelation that Arizona officials are preparing to execute death row inmates using hydrogen cyanide, the same gas with which the Nazis killed over a million people during the Holocaust under the trade name Zyklon B.
"You have to wonder what Arizona was thinking in believing that in 2021 it is acceptable to execute people in a gas chamber with cyanide gas. Did they have anybody study the history of the Holocaust?"
--Robert Dunham, DPIC
Documents obtained by The Guardian show that Arizona's Republican-controlled Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation, and Reentry (ADCRR) has spent $2,000 to obtain the materials needed to make cyanide gas, including a brick of potassium cyanide purchased last December for $1,530, as well as sodium hydroxide pellets and sulfuric acid.
The documents also revealed that the state's gas chamber at Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence--which was built in 1949 and hasn't been used to kill anyone in 22 years--has been "refurbished."
The Guardian called some of the techniques used to test the death chamber's efficacy "astonishingly primitive," including checking its air-tightness by lighting a candle and holding it up against a sealed door and windows.
The last Arizona gas chamber execution stands as a cautionary tale for death row inmates facing the choice of whether to die by gassing or lethal injection. In March 1999, Walter LeGrand, a German national, took 18 minutes to die as he suffered what an eyewitness described as "agonizing choking and gagging" in a cloud of cyanide vapor.
On April 6, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich announced the state was ready to resume killing prisoners, and that he would ask the state Supreme Court to begin issuing execution warrants. Brnovich's announcement came a month after ADCRR said it had obtained a supply of the lethal injection drug pentobarbital. The Guardian reported in April that Arizona officials spent $1.5 million to acquire pentobarbital from an undisclosed source.
This single-drug execution method causes victims to endure "excruciating suffering, including sensations of drowning and suffocation," according to anesthesiology expert Dr. Gail Van Norman.
As Common Dreams reported at the time, the last inmate executed by lethal injection in Arizona took nearly two hours to die. Joseph Wood, who was killed in July 2014, gulped and snorted hundreds of times as 15 shots of an experimental mix of midazolam and hydromorphone coursed through his veins.
States have been accused of using condemned prisoners as human guinea pigs as they experiment with substitute lethal injection drugs amid growing refusal by companies to sell their products for use in executions.
Wood's botched execution prompted a temporary suspension of capital punishment in Arizona, as lawyers for condemned convicts and human rights defenders argued such killings violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.
According to The Guardian, officials have selected two of Arizona's 115 death row inmates as likely candidates for killing once executions resume. Joseph Perkovich, an attorney for Frank Atwood, one of the candidates, told the paper that "neither option"--gassing or lethal injection--"is tenable." Perkovich said a discrepancy between the potassium cyanide obtained by corrections officials and the sodium cyanide called for under state execution protocol "is not a small detail."
"The specific compound is vitally important," he stressed.
Anti-death penalty campaigners have sounded the alarm over Arizona's plan to kill prisoners using the same gas with which the Nazis murdered (pdf) around 1.1 million people in extermination camps including Auschwitz.
"This is not justice--it's horrifying," the ACLU tweeted.
"You have to wonder what Arizona was thinking in believing that in 2021 it is acceptable to execute people in a gas chamber with cyanide gas," Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) executive director Robert Dunham told The Guardian. "Did they have anybody study the history of the Holocaust?"
Death penalty abolitionists have expressed shock in recent days following the revelation that Arizona officials are preparing to execute death row inmates using hydrogen cyanide, the same gas with which the Nazis killed over a million people during the Holocaust under the trade name Zyklon B.
"You have to wonder what Arizona was thinking in believing that in 2021 it is acceptable to execute people in a gas chamber with cyanide gas. Did they have anybody study the history of the Holocaust?"
--Robert Dunham, DPIC
Documents obtained by The Guardian show that Arizona's Republican-controlled Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation, and Reentry (ADCRR) has spent $2,000 to obtain the materials needed to make cyanide gas, including a brick of potassium cyanide purchased last December for $1,530, as well as sodium hydroxide pellets and sulfuric acid.
The documents also revealed that the state's gas chamber at Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence--which was built in 1949 and hasn't been used to kill anyone in 22 years--has been "refurbished."
The Guardian called some of the techniques used to test the death chamber's efficacy "astonishingly primitive," including checking its air-tightness by lighting a candle and holding it up against a sealed door and windows.
The last Arizona gas chamber execution stands as a cautionary tale for death row inmates facing the choice of whether to die by gassing or lethal injection. In March 1999, Walter LeGrand, a German national, took 18 minutes to die as he suffered what an eyewitness described as "agonizing choking and gagging" in a cloud of cyanide vapor.
On April 6, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich announced the state was ready to resume killing prisoners, and that he would ask the state Supreme Court to begin issuing execution warrants. Brnovich's announcement came a month after ADCRR said it had obtained a supply of the lethal injection drug pentobarbital. The Guardian reported in April that Arizona officials spent $1.5 million to acquire pentobarbital from an undisclosed source.
This single-drug execution method causes victims to endure "excruciating suffering, including sensations of drowning and suffocation," according to anesthesiology expert Dr. Gail Van Norman.
As Common Dreams reported at the time, the last inmate executed by lethal injection in Arizona took nearly two hours to die. Joseph Wood, who was killed in July 2014, gulped and snorted hundreds of times as 15 shots of an experimental mix of midazolam and hydromorphone coursed through his veins.
States have been accused of using condemned prisoners as human guinea pigs as they experiment with substitute lethal injection drugs amid growing refusal by companies to sell their products for use in executions.
Wood's botched execution prompted a temporary suspension of capital punishment in Arizona, as lawyers for condemned convicts and human rights defenders argued such killings violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.
According to The Guardian, officials have selected two of Arizona's 115 death row inmates as likely candidates for killing once executions resume. Joseph Perkovich, an attorney for Frank Atwood, one of the candidates, told the paper that "neither option"--gassing or lethal injection--"is tenable." Perkovich said a discrepancy between the potassium cyanide obtained by corrections officials and the sodium cyanide called for under state execution protocol "is not a small detail."
"The specific compound is vitally important," he stressed.
Anti-death penalty campaigners have sounded the alarm over Arizona's plan to kill prisoners using the same gas with which the Nazis murdered (pdf) around 1.1 million people in extermination camps including Auschwitz.
"This is not justice--it's horrifying," the ACLU tweeted.
"You have to wonder what Arizona was thinking in believing that in 2021 it is acceptable to execute people in a gas chamber with cyanide gas," Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) executive director Robert Dunham told The Guardian. "Did they have anybody study the history of the Holocaust?"
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.