Execution: A Guide to the Ultimate Penalty (21 page)

GAS CHAMBER

‘Those entering the chamber originally wore gas masks of wartime pattern but now wear oxygen-masks, witnesses describing the smell as that of bitter almonds, a sickeningly sweet yet acrid odour.’

As some of those driven to suicide choose to end their lives by putting their heads in a gas oven, and as gas was used as a lethal weapon in wartime, what better way than to employ the same means as a method of executing criminals? This hypothesis was evidently in the mind of Major D. A. Turner of the United States Army Medical Corps when, in the 1920s, he studied the reported effects of gas attacks on army personnel in the battlefields of World War One.

Released from canisters, providing the wind direction was favourable, or contained in artillery shells which were fired into enemy lines, the gases used included prussic acid, hydrogen cyanide or hydrochloric acid. Depending on the density encountered, the individual experienced feelings of panic at his difficulty in breathing; his balance would be affected, his swollen tongue would protrude, his face turning a purplish hue as the gas paralysed his heart and lungs, in time bringing a slow and agonising death.

But surely these prolonged and painful symptoms could be eliminated, if a highly concentrated quantity of lethal gas were administered to a condemned person under controlled conditions? Experiments were carried out on cats, using the same gas, hydrocyanic acid, as that employed in exterminating colonies of rats and similar vermin, and these proved so successful that the state of Nevada adopted the method forthwith.

The first execution by gas took place on 8 February 1924 in the prison at Carson City, Nevada. Murderer Gee Jon died apparently painlessly, death being confirmed by the doctors 6 or so minutes after the gas had been pumped into the chamber. During the ensuing years other criminals met their end in that way and, just as the electric chair had found favour with the legislature, if not the criminal fraternity, of other states, so the gassing method was adopted elsewhere. California replaced its rope and noose with a gas chamber, installing one in San Quentin Prison in March 1938.

Common sense decreed that one didn’t simply equip it with the necessary tubing circuitry and then sit back and wait for the first execution; tests had to be made to formulate operational procedures and to examine the equipment for correct functioning. Accordingly, the Californian authorities decided to dispatch some innocent pigs by the new method, such animals being considered the nearest, physiologically, to human beings. Needless to say the local press had a field day with this novel news item, comments involving smoked ham and how not to save one’s bacon being much in vogue.

The write-ups following the actual attendance of journalists at the trials were, however, in complete contrast to the earlier facetious articles, all of them expressing the repugnance felt by those who witnessed the frantic struggles of the 25-pound pig in its wooden crate, comparisons being made with methods of medieval torture and suffering. Nevertheless, in December 1938, two murderers, Albert Kessell and Robert Lee Cannon, launched the gas chamber into active service by their presence, 12 minutes elapsing before Cannon was declared dead, a further three minutes passing before Kessell’s heart stopped beating.

The equipment and the sequence of events in San Quentin Prison are quite straightforward. On the day preceding the execution, the condemned person is transferred to a concrete-walled cell on Death Row measuring 4½ feet wide by 10½ feet long. Its front consists of 13 vertical metal bars 2½ inches apart, which pass through six horizontal steel slats, to which they are welded and bolted. The cells are furnished with lavatories and mattresses, with two guards to keep them company, day and night.

After a dinner of their choice, they are visited by the warden and the chaplain. Fifteen minutes or so before ten o’clock the next morning, the prisoner dons a white shirt and blue jeans, the garments pocketless so that the fumes cannot collect therein, and the doctor attaches a stethoscope diaphragm to their chest with tape. The doctor also examines them with a view to ensuring that, in accordance with the law, the condemned person realises what is to happen to them. On one occasion, in 1954, a victim’s mental state was such that a series of electric shock treatments had to be administered to awaken his senses to reality, the man then being hurried to the gas chamber before a relapse occurred.

The gas chamber itself, only a matter of feet away from the death-watch cell, is a green-painted, airtight, octagonal-shaped steel cubicle with an oval door, its windows securely sealed to prevent any accidental escape of the toxic gas. Within it, bolted to the floor, are two chairs with the necessarily perforated seats. The chamber is equipped with a vacuum pump to ensure that any leak would suck air from the outside into the chamber rather than permit the gas to seep out into the ante-room, and the temperature within has to be at least 80°F because any temperature lower than that would result in the gas condensing as drops of moisture on the walls and floor.

Beneath each chair is a bowl; immediately above, suspended on a hook at the end of a long rod, hangs a bag of cheesecloth or similar gauze-like material containing one pound of sodium cyanide crystals or pellets. In the adjoining area, the mixing room, a mixture of sulphuric acid and distilled water is prepared by the executioner and placed in two 1 gallon containers. In some states three people perform the duty of executioners, but only one of them brings about the victim’s death; the identity of the one responsible is not known to any member of the team (in the same way as a blank round is meant to ease the consciences of members of a firing squad).

At the appointed time the condemned person is escorted along the narrow strip of faded carpet – considerately placed there because the victim is barefoot – into the chamber, where they are strapped into one of the chairs. A long tube extends from the area where the doctor and witnesses are seated and through the wall of the chamber; this is attached to the stethoscope diaphragm on the victim’s chest. After the guards have vacated the chamber and locked the door, the executioner allows the solution of water and acid to run via tubing into the bowls beneath the chairs. And on the signal being given, pulls the red-painted lever which, in rotating the long rods, allows the hooks to lower each bag of pellets into the sulphuric acid.

The pale-coloured fumes – hydrocyanic acid gas – resulting from the chemical reaction start to fill the chamber. Although many victims instinctively attempt to hold their breath, inevitably the effort cannot be sustained. After some minutes, depending on the physical condition of the victim and other associated factors, the doctor confirms the cessation of heartbeats, although of course the victim could well have lapsed into unconsciousness within seconds of inhaling the fumes.

It is not known precisely what sensations are experienced by the victim, but those who have been subjected to accidental cyanide poisoning report that the effects are of giddiness and headache, vomiting, hyperventilation and subsequent collapse.

The chamber is vented of its poisonous contents by a fan which expels the fumes through a chimney, this taking about 15 to 20 minutes. Further precautions must then be taken, ammonia being sprayed within the chamber to neutralise any lingering traces, the gas remaining lethal for at least an hour. Those entering the chamber originally wore gas masks of wartime pattern but now wear oxygen-masks, witnesses describing the smell as that of bitter almonds, a sickeningly sweet yet acrid odour.

The few clothes worn by the victim are removed and burned, while the body, heavily impregnated by the fumes, must be thoroughly washed with ammonia or chlorine bleach before being released into the care of an undertaker, if claimed by a relative, or prior to burial elsewhere, as regulations decree.

As with any method of execution, however, things occasionally have gone wrong, sometimes badly wrong. At one execution the man snapped the straps binding him and got loose in the chamber, the guards having to re-enter and overpower him. Another grim scene occurred when Robert Pierce, a 27-year-old, attempted to cut his throat with a shard of broken mirror he had secreted. There being little point in bandaging him and then executing him, he was forthwith half-carried to the chair and strapped in, exclaiming loudly: ‘I’m innocent, God, you know I’m innocent.’ And as the oval door swung to, witnesses heard him shout: ‘God, you son-of-a-bitch, don’t let me go like this!’

Juanita Spinelli, the first woman to be gassed to death in California, had reached the chamber when the warden, Clinton T. Duffy, veteran eventually of 90 executions including those of two women, suddenly realised that the witnesses hadn’t arrived. The condemned woman had to wait within sight of the open door, her fortitude impressing even the guards waiting with her.

Caryl Chessman was a classic case – not because of any fault in the procedure but, after repeated appeals and reconsiderations, because he spent 12 years on Death Row before finally dying in the gas chamber. The only thing that was defective, in that particular sense, was not the execution method, but rather the judicial system in force at the time. Perhaps the real deterrent, if there is one, would be the prolonged waiting time, rather than the execution itself.

A man who spent even longer on San Quentin’s Death Row was Robert Alton Harris, who was finally executed in April 1992 for the killing of two teenage youths. In the death-watch cell he had been provided with a television set, cigarettes and soft drinks, his last meal consisting of Kentucky Fried Chicken, two pizzas without anchovies, a bag of jelly-beans and a cola drink.

While nearly 50 witnesses watched, Harris inhaled the gas deeply and twitched convulsively. His face turned red as he fought for breath, and the doctor pronounced him dead shortly afterwards. His last words to the prison warden could well serve as the epitaph for those executed by any method: ‘You can be a king or a street sweeper, but everybody dances with the Grim Reaper!’

When, in Britain, existing methods of execution were being considered by the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment in 1949–53, the council of the British Medical Association stated:

‘Perhaps the most effective and humane method that could be adopted in place of hanging is gassing. It is possible to introduce suddenly into a suitable chamber a concentration of pure and colourless carbon monoxide which would cause loss of consciousness instantaneously and painlessly, followed rapidly by death. Nevertheless, the method is one which has highly unpleasant associations. Apart from this consideration, it might be the best alternative.’

The ‘unpleasant associations’ to which the medical men were alluding were those of the concentration camps set up by the Nazis in World War Two, in which countless thousands of people, mainly Jewish, were killed by the use of gas.

The first chemical used was in fact carbon monoxide, the victims being marshalled into buses under the pretext of being transported elsewhere. The vehicles had been converted into what were actually gas chambers on wheels, having had the windows tightly sealed and the exhaust fumes piped back into the passenger compartment. Once the victims were on board, the doors were locked and sealed and the engine allowed to run for the necessary length of time, after which the doors were opened, the area ventilated and the corpses removed. Then, after all clothing and valuables had been removed, the latter even including gold dental fillings, the bodies were trucked to mass graves or crematoria.