Gas chamber
General Rochambeau developed a rudimentary method in 1803, during the Haitian Revolution, filling ships' cargo holds with sulfur dioxide to suffocate prisoners of war.
Most notably, during the Holocaust large-scale gas chambers designed for mass killing were used by Nazi Germany from the late 1930s, as part of the Aktion T4, and later for its genocide program.
More recently, escapees from North Korea have alleged executions to have been performed by gas chamber in prison camps, often combined with medical experimentation.
[15] In addition to persons with disabilities, these centres were also used during Action 14f13 to murder prisoners transferred from concentration camps in Germany, Austria, and Poland.
The Operation Reinhard extermination camps at Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka used exhaust fumes from stationary diesel engines.
[15] In search of more efficient killing methods, the Nazis experimented with using the hydrogen cyanide-based fumigant Zyklon B at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
[15] Most extermination camp gas chambers were dismantled or destroyed in the last months of World War II as Soviet troops approached, except for those at Dachau, Sachsenhausen and Majdanek.
The documents were identified as genuine by Kim Sang Hun, a London-based expert on Korea and human rights activist.
[20] The invention of mobile gas chambers, based on adapted vans with the storage compartment sealed and exhaust redirected inside, was attributed to Soviet NKVD officer Isai D.
[29] According to high-ranking NKVD officer Mikhail Schreder, they were used in the city of Ivanovo similar to that in Moscow: "When a closed truck arrived at the place of execution, all convicts were dragged out of cars in an unconscious state.
"[30][31] Soviet dissident Petro Grigorenko described in his memoirs a story told by his close friend and former prisoner of Gulag Vasil Teslia.
[33] On December 3, 1948, Miran Thompson and Sam Shockley were executed in the gas chamber at San Quentin State Prison for their role in the Battle of Alcatraz.
In 2007, 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.
"[39] However, this decision was vacated after California amended its statute to allow death row inmates to choose between lethal injection and the gas chamber.
[42] In October 2010, Governor of New York David Paterson signed a bill rendering gas chambers illegal for use by humane societies and other animal shelters.
[43] The hydrogen cyanide gas chamber is considered to be the most dangerous, most complicated, most time-consuming and most expensive method of administering the death penalty.
This leads to asphyxiation (death from lack of oxygen) without the painful and traumatic feeling of suffocation, or the side effects of poisoning.
[56] In April 2015, Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin approved a bill allowing nitrogen asphyxiation as an execution method.
[57] On March 14, 2018, Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter and Corrections Director Joe M. Allbaugh announced a switch to nitrogen gas as the state's primary method of execution.
Miller asserted that he had chosen nitrogen hypoxia as his method of execution, as permitted by Alabama law, but the form documenting his choice had been lost.
