Arizona plans to execute prisoners with a lethal gas the Nazis used at Auschwitz
By Meryl Kornfield
June 1, 2021 at 11:35 p.m. EDT
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Arizona is taking steps to use hydrogen cyanide, the deadly gas used during the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis at Auschwitz and other extermination camps, to kill inmates on death row.
Corrections officials have refurbished a gas chamber that hasn’t been used in more than 20 years and have procured ingredients for the lethal gas, also known as Zyklon B, according to partially redacted documents obtained by the Guardian. Invoices show that the state purchased a brick of potassium cyanide, sodium hydroxide pellets and sulfuric acid, and a report details the considerable efforts taken to deem the gas chamber at a prison in Florence, Ariz., “operationally ready.”
Critics of the gas method say that in addition to hydrogen cyanide’s infamous use in the mass killings of Jewish people by the Nazis, it has produced some of the most botched, disturbing executions in the United States.
“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,” Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, told the British outlet. “Did they have anybody study the history of the Holocaust?”
In a statement, the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry said it was “prepared to perform its legal obligation and commence the execution process as part of the legally imposed sentence, regardless of method selected.” The department pointed to the Arizona statute allowing a defendant sentenced to death to choose between lethal injection or lethal gas at least 20 days before the execution date.
There is little medical research about lethal gas’s effects on the human body, but executions using gas have taken much longer than other methods, according to Fordham University law professor Deborah Denno.
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Arizona’s preparation to use lethal gas comes amid a scarcity of execution drugs and as other states have taken a closer look at firing squads and other execution methods.
more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/06/01/arizona-gas-chamber-execution/
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