Report No. 187
(h) Gas Chamber
In an execution by the way of lethal gas, the prisoner is restrained and sealed in an airtight chamber. When given the signal, the executioner opens a valve, allowing hydrochloric acid to flow into a pan. Upon another signal, either potassium cyanide or sodium cyanide crystals are dropped mechanically into the acid, producing hydrocyanic gas. The hydro cyanic gas destroys the body's ability to process blood hemoglobin, and unconsciousness can occur within a few seconds if the prisoner takes a deep breath. However, if he or she holds their breath, death can take much longer, and the prisoner 15usually goes into wild convulsions.
Death usually occurs within six to 18 minutes. After the pronouncement of death, the chamber is evacuated through the use of carbon and neutralizing filters. Crews wearing gas masks decontaminate the body with bleach solution, and it is out gassed before being released. If this process was not done, the undertaker or anyone handling the body would be killed. Nevada was the first state to sanction the use of the gas chamber, and the first execution by lethal gas took place in February, 1924.
Since then it remained a means of carrying out the death sentence 31 times. Five States in the U.S.A. authorize the use of the gas chamber as an alternative to lethal injection, viz. Arizona, California, Maryland, Missouri, and Wyoming. In most cases the prisoner is allowed to choose the method of execution, depending on his or her date of sentencing. Eleven people have been executed by lethal gas in the United States since 1976. This method however is expensive and cumbersome. It also brings back to the mind the sad fact that hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed in gas chamber by the Nazi Germany.
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