The state of Arizona could be laying the groundwork for executing death row inmates in gas chambers, The Guardian reported Friday. The state's Corrections Department purchased the ingredients to make hydrogen cyanide, the same deadly gas that was used by Nazis for the mass murder of Jews and other groups during the Holocaust.
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The British paper revealed that the department spent more than $2,000 in procuring the ingredients to make the gas and sodium hydroxide pellets and sulfuric acid to generate it.
The gas chamber, housed in the Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence, was built in 1949 but has not been used for 22 years. According to documents obtained by The Guardian, it has recently been "refurbished."
The state, the report said, was looking for alternatives to restart its "deeply flawed" execution system, which was suspended in 2014 following the "botched" execution of convicted murderer Joseph Wood who had to be injected 15 times. A process that should have taken 10 minutes dragged on for two whole hours.
Officials also reportedly conducted a series of tests last August to appraise its "operability," and in December, it was declared "operationally ready," the Guardian reported.
Arizona death row inmates would be given a choice to decide which way to die – by lethal injection or in a gas chamber. The former is a method widely used in death penalty states and was considered a more humane alternative to gas, electric chair, or firing squad. That is, until Wood's botched execution.
Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said: "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. Did they have anybody study the history of the Holocaust?"
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