USA | "I watched Don Harding's execution in an Arizona gas chamber. His face still haunts me": Lawyer

"I will never forget the look on his face when he turned to me shortly after inhaling the fumes. It's an image of atrocity that will haunt me for the rest of my life."

Arizona’s announcement that it plans to resume using lethal gas to execute prisoners has forced me to revisit one of the worst experiences of my life.

On April 6, 1992, I witnessed the execution of my client, Don Harding, in Arizona’s gas chamber. His death was slow, painful, degrading and inhumane. It is mind-numbing to think that Arizona is resuming this barbaric practice.

Don Harding’s execution is seared into my memory. Shortly before midnight on April 5, 1992, my fellow witnesses and I were ushered into a chapel near the gas chamber and told to draw numbers. My pick – number one – meant I would enter the witness room first. I stood on the far left side of the small room facing a window with closed blinds.

After we were told the U.S. Supreme Court had denied Don’s final appeals and the execution would proceed, a prison official raised the blinds.

He looked at me in pain and horror

Don was already strapped in a chair facing away from the witness room. His arms and legs were tightly strapped to the chair. He was stripped virtually naked, wearing only a pair of white, diaper-like undershorts, and had an electric monitor attached to his chest.

The indignity of these circumstances turned my stomach. From where I was standing, I could see over Don’s left shoulder, and he could see me when he turned his head.

At a signal from a prison official, I heard a thumping noise. Almost immediately I saw white fumes begin to rise from a metal box on the floor towards Don’s head. The fumes moved more quickly than I expected and as they enveloped Don’s head, he eventually took a quick breath.

A few seconds later, he looked in my direction. His face was red and contorted as if he were attempting to fight through tremendous pain. His mouth was pursed shut and his jaw was clenched tight. Don then took several quick gulps of the fumes.

Don’s body started convulsing violently and his arms strained against the straps. His face and body turned a deep red and the veins in his temple and neck began to bulge until I thought they might explode.

Every few seconds he gulped for air. He was shuddering uncontrollably and his body was wracked with spasms. His head continued to snap back and forth. His hands were tightly clenched.

Gas chamber may be legal, but it's immoral

Several more minutes passed before the most violent of Don’s convulsions subsided. Then the muscles along his left arm and back began twitching in a wavelike motion under his skin. Spittle drooled from his mouth. I couldn’t believe that it was lasting so long. My knees shook so badly I thought I might collapse. Twice, I had to lean against the wall behind me. My heart raced and I thought I would vomit. I wept.

It took 10 minutes and 31 seconds for Don Harding to die. For at least eight of those minutes, he was writhing in agony. I will never forget the look on his face when he turned to me soon after inhaling the fumes. It is an image of atrocity that will haunt me for the rest of my life.

Nearly 30 years later, I can still see Don’s face.

Arizona now wants to resume this horrid method of execution, using a gas disturbingly like the one the Nazis deployed to murder millions in the Holocaust. Some survivors of the Holocaust are speaking out against this shocking decision.

State officials claim gas is a lawful method of execution despite the risks of a tortuous death. It may be “lawful,” but it is immoral and wrong. And it begs the question of what is lawful.

Every death penalty case involves a terrible and tragic crime, a victim or victims lost to violent death, and grieving family members left behind. But whether and how we choose to carry out executions says more about us than about the condemned prisoner.

We should not allow Arizona to carry out the nihilistic and barbaric atrocity of a gassing.

Source: azcentral.com, Jim Belanger, June 8, 2021. Jim Belanger is a defense lawyer in Tempe. He has represented more than 30 men who faced the death penalty. Don Harding was his only client to have been executed.

🚩 | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.

Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

Florida executes William Frances Silvia

Florida executed its 13th death row prisoner of the year Tuesday evening amid the state’s aggressive use of the death penalty championed by Governor Ron DeSantis. William Frances Silvia, 61, who was convicted of fatally shooting his estranged wife and injuring his mother-in-law in 2006, was pronounced dead at 6:11 p.m. after receiving the lethal three-drug injection at Florida State Prison. At 6 p.m. Tuesday, Silvia was already strapped to a gurney with an IV in his arm when the curtain to the death chamber went up. He remained relatively motionless with his eyes and mouth open throughout most of the execution while a priest sat at his feet and prayed.

Spared execution eight times, oldest inmate in US dies at 101 after 76 years behind bars

Francis Clifford Smith was given his last meal eight times. But after being spared execution each time, he went on to be regarded as the longest-serving prisoner in the US before dying in June at 101 years old. Convicted of murder in 1950 when he was 25, he always maintained his innocence, those who knew him told the BBC. Andrius Banevicius, the public information officer for Connecticut's Department of Correction, recounted how Smith used to feed the birds while in Osborn Prison, earning him the nickname The Birdman of Osborn.

Israel builds execution chamber for Palestinians convicted of murder

In March, the Knesset approved legislation that calls for the execution of Palestinians convicted by a military court of killing Israelis Israeli authorities are preparing a prison wing—replete with an execution chamber—designated specifically for Palestinian prisoners convicted of murder, Israel’s i24NEWS channel reported Tuesday. The move comes after the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) approved legislation in March that calls for the execution of Palestinian prisoners convicted by a military court of murdering Israelis.

Cartoons about Capital Punishment

More cartoons about capital punishment HERE

Hanging of Osaka Arsonist is Japan’s First Execution Under Takaichi Government

As a majority of the international community has abolished capital punishment. Japan and the U.S. are the only two countries in the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations that put people to death. The execution of Takami Sunao—an arsonist whose 2009 attack in Osaka killed five—on August 21, 2026, was Japan’s first use of capital punishment in just over a year. Over a Decade from Sentencing to Execution Takami Sunao was executed on August 21, 2026 , for a 2009 arson attack at an Osaka pachinko parlor that killed five people. In July 2009, Takami poured gasoline on the floor of a pachinko parlor in Osaka and set it alight, killing 5 customers and staff members and injuring 10 more. While the defense argued that he was in a state of diminished capacity, the Supreme Court finalized his death sentence in February 2016. The execution took place 17 years after the initial crime and 10 and a half years after the death sentence was finalized.

Japan executes man convicted of killing five in 2009 Osaka pachinko parlor arson

Japan on Friday announced the execution of a man convicted of killing five people after setting fire to an Osaka pachinko parlor in 2009, the first execution by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi 's government as the country faces growing calls for more transparency and the abolition of capital punishment. The Justice Ministry said Sunao Takami, 58, was hanged to death earlier Friday. Takami in 2009 set fire to the crowded pachinko parlor in Osaka by spreading gasoline and throwing a lit match, engulfing the building, killing five and injuring 10 others, Justice Minister Hiroshi Hiraguchi said.

Tennessee | The doctor who helps put prisoners to death

Dr. Mark Fowler assisted in the failed execution of a Tennessee prisoner. Physicians are meant to heal patients—why is he working in the death chamber? Mark Fowler, a physician with 25 years’ experience, stepped beneath the bright lights and approached the middle-aged man lying on a gurney. Around him, people in medical gowns prepared needles and sterile tubing. It had all the appearances of a hospital setting. Fowler had been called in to help establish an IV line through which the 57-year-old man, Tony Carruthers, would be injected with pharmaceutical drugs. The team had struggled to find a vein, so Fowler was summoned to set a central line—an intravenous catheter inserted into the major vein below the collarbone.

Israel’s Ben-Gvir posts video of gallows site for hanging Palestinian terrorists

Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has posted a video of the construction of a gallows complex where Palestinians convicted of terror offenses will be hanged. Ben-Givr said the new execution site would be equipped with viewing booths for families of victims to watch the hangings. He posted the video on social media of a visit he had made to the unidentified location, where he can be seen pointing at foundations being laid and saying it was where “terrorists will be executed." Photographs in the Israeli media showed a bulldozer and heavy construction work in a cordoned-off area, reportedly close to a prison.

Alabama is trying a death penalty bait-and-switch

For a decade, Alabama death row inmate Jeffrey Lee has been clear that he does not want to be executed by lethal injection . But that is what awaits him on September 17 . He faces that prospect because the state has been enjoined from using nitrogen hypoxia , the alternative execution method he preferred, to put him to death. Having failed to show that its nitrogen hypoxia protocol is constitutionally acceptable, Alabama wants a do-over to force Lee to die by lethal injection as a result of its own failure. It should not get one. Alabama should only be able to put Lee to death if it can fix nitrogen hypoxia’s constitutional defects.

Oklahoma executes Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez

Oklahoma has carried out 1 of 3 executions set for the same day in the United States in another sign of the resurgence of the death penalty in the country. Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez was pronounced dead at 10:13 a.m. on Thursday, Aug. 13, at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. He was put to death by lethal injection for the murder of his common-law wife in 2003 at their Oklahoma City home. He admitted to police he shot her twice during an argument. Cuesta-Rodriguez, 70, did not fight for his life, stunning his attorneys in July when he told the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board that he didn't want clemency. "It's time for me to pay for what I did," he said.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog