Jewish community leaders from Phoenix, Arizona filed a lawsuit against Arizona to stop the use of hydrogencyanide in executions. This gas was also used to murder Jews during the Holocaust.
“Approximately 80 Holocaust survivors call our state home, and many of them are horrified that we tax them to implement the same machinery of cruelty used to murder their loved ones,” Tim Eckstein (chairman of the board of The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Phoenix) stated in a statement.
“It is shocking that Arizona chose to use the exact same chemical compound used by Nazis in Auschwitz for the murder of more than a million people.”
According to records obtained from the Guardian, the Arizona Department of Corrections renovated its gas chamber and purchased ingredients to make cyanide gas in December 2020.
Arizona banned lethal gas use in 1992. Instead, it used lethal injection. Death row inmates convicted prior to 1992 could still be executed at a gas chamber.
Walter LaGrand was the last American inmate executed using lethal gas. He was convicted in Arizona of 1982 murder and sentenced to death in 1999.
A Tucson Citizen reporter reported at the time that cyanide pellets were dropped below LaGrand’s chair, and the inmate began to “cough violently” as a misty cloud of gas rose. LaGrand died in 18 minutes.
The American Civil Liberties Union is representing the Jewish leaders in this lawsuit. It claims that execution by lethal gases violates the Arizona Constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
“Regardless of the opinions of people on capital punishment, it is clear that this barbaric practice of cruelty must be abolished,” Jared Keenan (senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Arizona) stated in a statement.
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich requested the Supreme Court to establish briefing times so that his office could file execution warrants against Frank Atwood or Clarence Dixon.
In 1984, Atwood was convicted in Tucson of kidnapping and murdering a 8-year old girl. Dixon strangled, raped and stabbed to death a 21 year-old student at Arizona State University in 1978.
Brnovich’s Office notes that both inmates may choose between lethal injection and gas because they killed their victims prior to November 23, 1992.
Brnovich stated last month that justice has taken a while to come in the case of some of our most horrific crimes. It is our solemn duty, as a community, to execute these court-ordered sentences for the victims and their loved ones.
