PHOENIX — Calling it barbaric, cruel and unusual — and a painful reminder of the Holocaust for survivors who live here — some Jewish residents are trying to legally block the use of the gas chamber for future executions.
A lawsuit filed by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Phoenix and two of its members acknowledges that Arizona voters in 1992 eliminated the use of lethal gas, replacing it with lethal injections. That followed gruesome reports of the execution of Don Harding who took 11 minutes to die.
But that 1992 constitutional amendment, approved by a margin of more than 3-1, preserved the right for those already on death row to choose either option. And there are 17 there now who qualify.
That includes Frank Atwood, convicted of the 1984 slaying of 8-year-old Tucsonan Vicki Lynne Hoskinson, and Clarence Dixon who killed an Arizona State University student in 1978.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs said they are not asking Maricopa County Superior Court Judge John Hannah to rule on the legality of the death penalty. But they are saying that this particular practice should be outlawed.
The issue, according to the lawsuit, starts with the contention that the use of lethal gas violates a state constitutional provision against cruel and unusual punishment.
Beyond that, though, they seek to prevent the state from spending more taxpayer dollars, including those of Holocaust survivors, to expedite executing people with the same cyanide gas, called Zyklon B, that the Nazis used to kill millions of Jews.
The lawsuit includes descriptions from those who attended various executions, including the last two here in Arizona.
“The witnessed horrors included strenuous convulsions, agonizing gasps, agonized shrieking and thrashing, and one individual in so much pain he repeatedly smashed his head into a metal pole,” the lawyers said.
But they say that the whole process is “particularly harrowing” for Jews and about 80 survivors of the Holocaust who live in Arizona. And the lawsuit says that the plaintiffs have standing to sue because the state is using their tax dollars to purchase the chemicals — as the Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry has done as recently as 2020 in preparation for their possible use.
They cited documents, obtained through public records request, showing the agency purchased a potassium cyanide brick for $1,529 in December 2020 and sodium hydroxide and sulfuric acid just days later for $687.
It is dropping the cyanide into the acid that creates the lethal gas.
On top of that, the lawsuit notes that the state has been spending money to test and make repairs to the gas chamber.
To allow cyanide gas executions to take place means “effectively forcing them to subsidize and relive unnecessarily the same form of cruelty used in World War II atrocities.’’
“Many of these survivors are horrified at being taxed to implement the same machinery of cruelty that was used to murder their loved ones,’’ the attorney told the judge.
None of this would be necessary, the lawsuit charges, if Hannah declares that lethal injection with cyanide gas is no longer legal.
According to the attorneys, Arizona is one of only seven states that still allow the use of lethal gas. And in three of those states, they say that method is allowed only if courts ban the use of lethal injection.
There was no immediate response from Attorney General Mark Brnovich who has to defend the state against in the lawsuit.
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