Executioners

by Phil Clarke

  Another alternative was not found until the 1920s. With World War I only a few years past, those who aimed to discover a fresh method of execution looked to newly developed techniques used on the battle­field. Major Delos A. Turner of the United States Army Medical Corps had observed the use of gas during the conflict and saw potential. During World War I, gas – usually hydrogen cyanide or prussic acid – had been launched by artillery in shells or thrown by hand in canisters. When the gas was released it caused a variety of unpleasant results. The fumes attacked the respiratory system, induced panic attacks and caused the skin to turn purple and the tongue to swell. Turner thought if the gas could be modified to act quickly rather than killing the victim slowly, then those states which refused to electrocute their violent criminals would have another practical solution.

  Scientists took the Major’s proposal and put it to the test, performing experiments on cats to study the effects. These unfortunate felines were forced to in­hale the fumes from hydrocyanic acid and their swift deaths indicated that lethal gas could indeed be applied to humans as a humane form of execution. After some initial debate, in 1921 Nevada’s state legis­lature voted in favour of using gas as a replacement for hanging or the firing squad, and they became the first state to adopt this cleaner, swifter method of execution.

  The first victim to undergo this new form of execution was twenty-nine-year-old gang member Gee Jon who had been found guilty of murdering rival gangster Tom Quong Kee during the notorious Chinese Mafia wars. Despite his lawyers insisting that the process breached the eighth amendment, Gee Jon failed to acquire a stay of execution and his fate was sealed. The only remaining question was how to apply the gas.

  The Nevada authorities discussed piping the harmful vapours into the gangster’s cell, but this idea was rife with flaws. There would be no way to ensure the con­tainment of the lethal fumes and so it would risk the lives of other prison inmates and staff. In addition, there was no sure way to dispose of the toxic fumes which would linger unseen in the cell block. They soon realised that a stand-alone purpose built chamber had to be constructed in order to allow total control over the deadly gas. Boilermakers, The Eaton Metal Products Company of Salt Lake City and Colorado, were then engaged to design an appropriate piece of equipment that could safely despatch a prisoner with no harm coming to any witnesses. The company came up with a suitable design for a gas chamber along with a generator to create the gas and a safety guide on how to operate and maintain the machine.

  At 9.30 a.m. on 8 February 1924, Gee Jon was strapped into the chair in the gas chamber at Carson City, Nevada. The condemned was seen to struggle as the gas enveloped him, but after six minutes, Gee Jon ceased to resist. With no ability to confirm a definitive time of death, the chamber remained closed for a further thirty minutes to ensure completion of the sentence.

  Colorado followed Nevada’s lead in 1933 with their own unique gas chamber. Prison warden Roy Best paid a visit to Nevada’s chamber in May of that year and came away thinking one seat was not enough. He gave The Eaton Metal Products Company $2500 to build a three-seater model for Colorado which became known as ‘Roy’s Penthouse’. However, it was replaced by a more slim-line single seater in 1955. The first victim of the Nevada’s chamber was William Cody Kelley, who was strapped to one of the three seats on 22 June 1934. The convicted murderer would be just one of a growing number of executions in the United States – judicial murders peaking in 1935 at 199 – as the gas chamber joined electrocution and hanging as a practical and accepted method of capital punishment.

  With Nevada and Colorado proving that the gas chamber worked, other states began to look into a chamber and generator of their own. The state of California was keen to upgrade their death penalty and so liaised with The Eaton Metal Products Company to obtain assurances of improved efficiency. Earl Liston, the designer of the chambers already installed and operational in Nevada and Colorado, was adamant that the device was the quickest form of capital punishment with the ability to kill a man cleanly in about fifteen seconds. Ex-prison warden of San Quentin, James B. Holohan, who had seen many a disturbing death by hanging, managed to get elected to the State Senate. In 1937, he supported the move to make California the seventh state to adopt the gas chamber.

  Before the Californian chamber took its first human life, the authorities demanded a trial run of the $5,000 device, and in March 1938, in front of thirty witnesses at San Quentin Prison, a small reddish brown pig was gassed for the sake of humanity. The sacrificial swine remained caged upon one of the two seats as sixteen cyanide pellets were dropped into a bowl of sulphuric acid. Far from being a swift and silent death, the pig thrashed and squealed for almost three and a half minutes as the deadly fumes attacked its respiratory system.

  The press who were invited to attend the procedure in the hope that they would promote its use, wrote damning reports on the testing – describing the process as torture rather than a means for humane execution. Yet despite the fact that the Californian pig was not as co-operative as the Nevada cats, there was enough support for the chamber to get the go-ahead.

  The first prisoners to succumb to the deadly fumes of the Californian gas chamber were Robert Lee Cannon and Albert Kessell, who were also destined to be the first double gassing. The pair were sentenced to death for their involvement in a riot at Folsom Prison in which a warden, Clarence Larkin, was stabbed twelve times. On 2 December 1938, thirty-nine witnesses took their seats behind the thick, bullet-proof glass to watch the demise of the two men, who took their fate in rather high spirits. As the thick smoke rose from beneath their seats, Cannon was seen to mouth, ‘Nothing to it!’ before his eyes rolled back in his head and he fell unconscious. Far from the fifteen seconds promised by chamber designer, Earl Liston, Cannon’s death took twelve minutes. His partner in crime took a further three and a half minutes to be pronounced dead. The lack of speed and mercy was noted by, among others, the attending chaplain, Father George O’Meara, who had presided at over fifty hangings. He claimed that the new technique was the worst thing he had ever seen and called for its immediate abolition.

  Such protests failed to dissuade the Californian authorities and Cannon and Kessell became the first in a long line of convicts gassed within its borders. California went on to execute a total of 196 convicts over the years. They also became the first to gas a woman when Eithel Leta Juanita Spinelli passed away in a cloud of fatal fumes on 21 November 1941. The Eaton Metal Products Company went on to create similar chambers for Mississippi and Maryland, who acquired their Eaton gas chambers and generators in 1954 and 1959 respectively. Of the eleven states that opted for the gas chamber, only Missouri did not contract the Denver-based boilermakers to make their model. Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, countless protests and legal cases have insisted that the procedure was cruel and unusual and, therefore, unconstitutional. As a consequence only five states now offer the gas chamber as an alternative to lethal injection. These are Wyoming, Maryland, Missouri, Arizona and California.

  The Chamber

  The cubicle in which a death-row inmate breathes his last is a bleak and foreboding place. Like something from a work of science fiction, the gas chamber is a highly complex piece of apparatus, including valves, gaskets and other essential fittings, for what is the simple exercise of gassing a man (or woman) to death. These rooms are chiefly manufactured by one company but they differ slightly from state to state. The chamber situated in the basement of San Quentin Prison, California, is octagonal in shape measuring 1.8 x 2.4 metres (6 x 8 foot) and painted an eerie pale green and is fitted with two chairs which are bolted to the floor and plainly marked A and B. The six-sided example in Mississippi varied in size as well as shape. It was slightly larger than its equivalent in California, reaching almost 2.7 metres (9 foot) high at its centre point and 1.9 metres (6 ft) in diameter. Before its final bow on 21 June 1989, with the execution of convicted murderer Leo Edwards, the chamber within the red-bricked maximum security fac
ility at Mississippi State Penitentiary was made of welded, riveted steel and painted – inside and out – with an aluminium acid resistant coating. The entrance to the cell was through a rubber sealed door which, when closed by a worm-gear and wheel mechanism ordinarily found on marine vessels, helped form an airtight system. The bullet-proof glass windows, through which the visiting witnesses would view the proceedings, were fixed into steel, gasketed frames. All edges to these apertures were coated in thick petroleum jelly as a further guard against leakage.

  Inside the pressurised chamber there were addi­tional security measures to prevent any hazardous gas leaks. Nothing was left to chance, even down to the light fittings which were explosion-proof models to safeguard against any errant spark that could ignite the combustible fumes. A manometer (used to measure the pressure of gas) consisted of a tube filled with mercury which was fitted to the interior of the chamber so that the execution staff could keep an eye out for any pressure leaks. Along with this instrument, a vial of phenolphthalein solution was placed inside to monitor the presence of gas within – an essential piece of equipment when it came to the post execution extraction of the gas. The liquid inside the vial turned red when the room was completely clear of the lethal asphyxiate.

  Beneath the seats of the chamber, a bowl was placed, above which, suspended on the end of a thin rod, hung a muslin bag containing on average twenty-four pellets – also known as briquettes or eggs – of sodium cyanide.

  The Preparation

  While the gas chamber had found its way into the judicial systems of eleven separate states throughout the United States, from California in the west to Maryland on the Eastern Seaboard, the procedure followed by the prison officials is much the same wherever you happen to be. The Eaton Metal Products Company had, with the exception of the chamber in Missouri, the monopoly on the devices throughout the States which helped to ensure uniformity. The Colorado boilermakers also created a common code of practice to deal with the deadly gas before, during and after an execution, ensuring that the strictest safety measures were in place.

  Despite its simple objective, the gas chamber is a complex piece of equipment and has to be meticulously prepared before every execution. Full and rigorous structural checks are made, together with verifi­cation that there are no blockages in the plumbing and piping. The pressurisation of the chamber is tested, as well as the calibration of all gauges such as the manometer, before the con­demned takes their seat. Outside the death room itself, safety precautions include emergency breathing apparatus, special hydrogen cyanide first-aid kits and emergency vehicles on standby. In Mississippi, a surprising safety measure included the evacuation of the guard tower at the prison entrance, in order to prevent any risk to watchmen from the deadly gas expelled from the chamber’s nearby chimney.

  As for the prisoner, they are granted a last meal of their choice, and shortly before the call to the chamber, they are visited by the prison warden and the prison chaplain. In many prisons, on the day of their death the condemned are moved from the main block to a private concrete cell on Death Row. These cells measure less than 1.5 x 3.4 metres (5 x 11 feet) and contain a toilet, a mattress and two guards who remain with the convict throughout the day and night. After what must be a fitful night’s sleep for the inmate, he or she is prepared for execution. The prison uniform is replaced by a plain white shirt and pocket-less blue jeans so that the gas has no place to collect and, for the same reason, the shoes are removed. The presiding doctor then affixes a stethoscope and heart monitor to the prisoner and confirms their clarity of mind. This is a prerequisite for execution, as the law demands that all death-row inmates must be fully aware of their imminent fate. In the early years of the gas chamber, there were ways of forcefully obtaining this lucidity. In 1954, a soon-to-be victim of the chamber had to be given electroshock therapy to be made suitably conscious of what was about to befall him.

  While the prisoner is being prepared, the execu­tioner is in the mixing room creating a deadly cocktail of diluted sulphuric acid made from 3.6 litres (6 pints) of acid and 7.2 litres (12 pints) of warm distilled water, and the chamber is brought to a constant 26°C (78.3°F). This was not to make the experience of the condemned any more comfortable but to ensure the hydrogen cyanide, the gas ultimately responsible for the ending of the prisoner’s life, does not reach its condensation point of 25.7°C (78.3°f) and thus turn to a liquid, which could dangerously develop on the windows, walls and floor of the chamber.

  The Execution Process

  The barefoot convict then makes his final journey escorted by prison staff and, entering through the chamber door is seated in one of the perforated chairs placed over the contraption containing the sodium cyanide crystals. The prisoner is securely strapped across his ankles, thighs, arms and chest in the faint hope that the restraints will minimise the many uncontrolled spasms his body will be forced to endure when the time comes. Once the convict is firmly fastened to the chair, the attached stethoscope and heart monitor leads are fed through small apertures into the viewing room, so that the physician can observe the prisoner’s vital signs and confirm the all-important time of death. The prison guards then vacate the cell. The slam of the steel door sounds the death knell for the victim inside. The nautical-style wheel is turned, locking the door tight against its rubber seal and forming the airtight container ready for the final component – the gas.

  The executioner then sends a freshly mixed blend of sulphuric acid and distilled water through tubing which leads to the bowl beneath the inmate. Once the receptacle is full, the curtain is opened for the invited parties to witness the completion of the sentence. As part of an official execution, the press, select family members and representatives of the prison and legal system are permitted to view the dramatic affair and hear the prisoner’s final statement. Once the last words have been uttered, the signal is then given to the executioner who removes the locking pin and turns the gas valve lever, causing the rod to rotate and tip the bag of briquettes into the bowl beneath it. This allows a chemical reaction to take place between the sodium cyanide and the diluted sulphuric acid creating deadly hydrocyanic gas or hydrogen cyanide. Instantaneously, thick plumes of white smoke begin to rise from the bowl and envelop the prisoner.

  Waiting to Inhale

  As the expanding cloud of lethal asphyxiate fills the room, the prisoner instinctively struggles to find clean air or worse, attempts to hold his breath. However, this natural action only serves to prolong the agony so prison officials advise that the condemned to inhale as deeply as possible to speed up the process and hasten the arrival of unconsciousness. One has to ask how humane is a device that calls for the victim to effectively contribute to his or her death. The prisoner blacks out on average between one and three minutes after the chemical reaction. Death takes as little as ten or twelve minutes to occur.

  Obviously, first-hand accounts of the gas chamber are rare. However, victims’ reactions to the lethal fumes tend to follow a similar pattern. Whether or not the seated and strapped inmate holds his breath in a vain attempt to survive, he or she will eventually be forced to inhale the deadly asphyxiate and will – in a relatively short space of time – succumb to its toxicity. Through irregular breathing combined with the overall feeling of terror, the victim will often begin to hyperventilate and suffer from extreme headaches and a feeling of nausea. Before consciousness is lost, the prisoner will experience a loss of balance, too. The cognisant state of the victim during the gassing has been compared to the effects of a heart attack or epileptic seizure. The prisoner will begin to drool, looking and feeling as if he is being strangled to death as his skin turns purple and his eyes begin to bulge. The condemned will feel pain in the arms, shoulders, back and in the chest as the body gives in to hypoxia; a condition whereby the brain and other essential tissues are starved of oxygen. The manner in which the gas attacks the prisoner’s vital organs and nervous system breeds doubt as to whether this method of execution was as humane and merciful as
various authorities have proclaimed.

  Post Execution

  Once the prison’s physician has confirmed the death of the condemned, the exhaust fan is switched on and the fumigation process begins. The venomous vapours are removed from the cubicle via the con­nected chimney. Adherence to this post-execu­tion procedure is of paramount importance to ensure the health and safety of those involved. The extraction process lasts for fifteen to twenty minutes. The chamber undergoes five full air changes in order to guarantee that it is completely clear of hydrogen cyanide.

  Only after this will the first members of the clean-up team enter the death cell, and they will be wearing the requisite oxygen masks and full chemical suits complete with air packs. This is in case any traces of the noxious gas linger behind after the extensive decontamination of the air, and also because the solutions they use to clean inside the chamber are themselves toxic. Anhydrous ammonia is sprayed throughout the interior via an injection system hooked up to the air intake manifold. This highly poisonous neutraliser, which has a sweet scent reminiscent of almonds, ensures that the chamber remains a deadly place to be for at least an hour after the execution. The post-death squad scrub down the inside and all instruments are meticulously cleaned with further disinfecting agents. The acid mixing pot used to create the diluted sulphuric acid is filled with caustic soda to render it safe.

  The corpse is examined just as closely for signs of hydrocyanic gas before being carried out. Procedure 769 calls for the cleaners to ruffle the hair of the body to ensure that all remnants of the toxic gas are removed before it is taken away. All items of clothing are removed from the corpse and incinerated before the body makes the penultimate journey to the undertaker and lastly into the possession of a relative.