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A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. The most commonly used poisonous agent is hydrogen cyanide; carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide have also been used.

Gas chambers were used as a method of execution for condemned prisoners in the United States beginning in the 1920s. During the Holocaust, large-scale gas chambers designed for mass killing were used by Nazi Germany as part of their genocide program.^[1] Their use has also been reported in North Korea.

Gas chambers have also been used for animal euthanasia, using carbon dioxide as the lethal agent. Sometimes a box filled with anaesthetic gas is used to anaesthetize small animals for surgery or euthanasia.

Contents 1 Execution by gas chamber 2 United States 3 Nazi Germany 4 Napoleonic France 5 Other nations 6 References

When executions by gas chambers were conducted in the United States, the general protocol was as follows. First, the execution technician will place a quantity of potassium cyanide (KCN) pellets into a compartment directly below the chair in the chamber. The condemned person is then brought into the chamber and strapped into the chair, and the airtight chamber is sealed. At this point the execution technician will pour a quantity of concentrated sulfuric acid (H₂SO₄) down a tube that leads to a small holding tank directly below the compartment containing the cyanide pellets. The curtain is then opened, allowing the witnesses to observe the inside of the chamber. The prison warden will then ask the condemned individual if he or she wishes to make a final statement. Following this, the executioner(s) will throw a switch/lever to cause the cyanide pellets to drop into the sulfuric acid, initiating a chemical reaction that generates hydrogen cyanide (HCN) gas:

2KCN (s) + H₂SO₄ (aq) → 2HCN (g) + K₂SO₄

The gas is visible to the condemned, and he/she is advised to take several deep breaths to speed unconsciousness in order to prevent unnecessary suffering. Most prisoners, however, try to hold their breath.^[2] Death from hydrogen cyanide is usually painful and unpleasant, although theoretically the condemned individual should lose consciousness before dying. The chamber is then purged of the gas through special scrubbers, and must be neutralized with anhydrous ammonia (NH₃) before it can be opened. Guards wearing oxygen masks remove the body from the chamber. Finally, the prison doctor examines the individual in order to officially declare that he or she is dead and release the body to the next of kin.

One of the problems with the gas chamber is the inherent danger of dealing with such a toxic gas. Anhydrous ammonia is used to cleanse the chamber after cyanide gas has been used:

HCN + NH₃ → NH₄⁺ + CN^-.

The anhydrous ammonia used to clean the chamber afterwards, and the contaminated acid that must be drained and disposed of, are both very poisonous.

Nitrogen gas or oxygen-depleted air has been considered for human execution, as it can induce Nitrogen asphyxiation. It has not been used to date.^[3]

Gas chambers have been used for capital punishment in the United States to execute criminals, especially convicted murderers. The first person to be executed in the United States by gas chamber was Gee Jon, on February 8, 1924 in Nevada. In 1957, Burton Abbott was executed as the governor of California, Goodwin J. Knight was on the telephone to stay the execution.^[4] Since the restoration of the death penalty in the United States in 1976, only ten executions by gas chamber have been conducted.^[5] By the 1980s, reports of suffering during gas chamber executions had led to controversy over the use of this method.

At the September 2, 1983 execution of Jimmy Lee Gray in Mississippi, officials cleared the viewing room after eight minutes while Gray was still alive and gasping for air. The decision to clear the room while he was still alive was criticized by his attorney. David Bruck, an attorney specializing in death penalty cases, said "Jimmy Lee Gray died banging his head against a steel pole in the gas chamber while reporters counted his moans."^[6]

During the April 6, 1992 execution of Donald Harding in Arizona, it took eleven minutes for death to occur. The state Attorney General observing the execution vomited, and the prison warden stated that he would quit if required to conduct another gas chamber execution.^[7] Following Harding's execution, Arizona voted that all persons condemned after November 1992 would be executed by lethal injection.^[5]

Following the videotaped execution of Robert Alton Harris a federal court declared that "execution by lethal gas under the California protocol is unconstitutionally cruel and unusual."^[8] By the late 20th century, most states had switched to methods considered to be more humane, such as lethal injection. California's gas chamber at San Quentin State Prison was converted to an execution chamber for lethal injection.

As of 2006, the last person to be executed in the gas chamber was German national Walter LaGrand, sentenced to death before 1992, who was executed in Arizona on March 3, 1999. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled that he could not be executed by gas chamber, but the decision was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.^[5] Five states, Wyoming, California, Maryland, Missouri, and Arizona, retain the gas chamber as a method of execution, but allow lethal injection as an alternative.^[9]

Gas chambers were used in the Third Reich during the 1930s and 1940s as part of the "public euthanasia program" aimed at eliminating physically and intellectually disabled people and political undesirables in the 1930s and 1940s. At that time, the preferred gas was carbon monoxide, often provided by the exhaust gas of cars or trucks or army tanks.^[10]

During the Holocaust, gas chambers were designed to accept large groups as part of the Nazi policy of genocide against Jews and others. In early 1940, the use of hydrogen cyanide produced by Zyklon B was tested on 250 Roma children from Brno at the Buchenwald concentration camp.^[11] On September 3, 1941, 600 Soviet POWs were gassed with Zyklon B at Auschwitz camp I; this was the first experiment with the gas at Auschwitz.^[12]

Carbon monoxide was also used in large purpose-built gas chambers. The gas was provided by internal combustion engines (detailed in the Gerstein Report).^[13]

Gas chambers in mobile vans, concentration camps, and extermination camps were used to kill several million people between 1941 and 1945. Some stationary gas chambers could kill 2,500 people at once. Numerous sources record the use of gas chambers in the Holocaust, including the direct testimony of Rudolf Hoess, Commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp.^[14]

The gas chambers were dismantled when Soviet troops got close, except at Dachau, Sachsenhausen, and Majdanek. The gas chamber at Auschwitz I was reconstructed after the war as a memorial, but without a door in its doorway and without the wall that originally separated the gas chamber from a washroom. The door that had been added when the gas chamber was converted into an air raid shelter was left intact.^[15]

Main article: The Crime of Napoleon

In his book, Le Crime de Napoléon, French historian Claude Ribbe has claimed that in the early 19th century, Napoleon used poison gas to put down slave rebellions in Haiti and Guadeloupe. Based on accounts left by French officers, he alleges that enclosed spaces including the holds of ships were used as makeshift gas chambers where sulphur dioxide gas (probably generated by burning sulphur) was used to execute up to 100,000 rebellious slaves. These claims remain controversial.^[16]

In 2004 it was reported that gas chambers were used by North Korea both as punishment and for testing of lethal agents on humans. ^[17]