With executions by lethal injection tied up in court since 2006, prosecutors in California are proposing to bring back the gas chamber.
A bill sponsored by the California District Attorneys Association would authorize a new method of execution: filling the chamber with a nontoxic gas, such as nitrogen or helium, to displace the oxygen and suffocate the prisoner.
California's last execution by cyanide gas was in 1993. A federal judge ruled in 1994 that the gas chamber at San Quentin State Prison caused excruciating pain and violated the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment, and the state switched to lethal chemicals.
A condemned prisoner can still choose to be executed by gas rather than injection. The new legislation, introduced by state Sen. Joel Anderson, R-Alpine (San Diego County), would preserve that option.
But the bill also specifies that if lethal injection is not available, an inmate whose last appeal has been denied must be executed in the gas chamber.
Other provisions would shorten the appeal process, eliminate the need for public review of regulations on execution procedures, and bar public disclosure of the suppliers of drugs and equipment used in executions. The bill, SB779, is scheduled to be heard by a state Senate committee April 30.
"All we're trying to do is to get the death penalty implemented," Scott Thorpe, executive director of the California District Attorneys Association, said Monday. "We hope the Legislature will take into consideration what the voters have continued to say" when they rejected an initiative in November that would have repealed the death penalty.
Kent Scheidegger of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, another backer of SB779, said the problem with the old gas chamber "was purely the choice of gas." Using a different gas "would provide a painless and more dignified alternative," he said.
But Natasha Minsker, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who managed the campaign for the repeal measure, said the proposed gas-suffocation executions have not been used anywhere in the world.
"There is no evidence that this is an effective or humane way to carry out executions," Minsker said. "This bill shows how desperate they are and how we cannot fix California's broken death penalty."
The state's last execution was in January 2006. A federal judge ruled later that year that lethal injections at San Quentin, carried out by a poorly trained staff in a dimly lit chamber, posed an undue risk of a prolonged and agonizing death.
Since then, state officials have struggled to rewrite their procedures, cope with a shortage of execution drugs and fend off challenges in both state and federal courts. The moratorium is likely to continue for at least the rest of 2013.
So, in short, necrojudical difficulties leads to a bill that, among other things, reinstates the gas chamber as a secondary option, but with a different gas. Due to the previous necrojudical difficulties, the gas chamber will have to be used, thus cementing California's place as the western Florida. Any thoughts?
(Here more info on the bill, BTW.)
