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.

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