Death Penalty News

OSWIECIM, Poland — The SS carried out the largest public hanging in Auschwitz history on July 19, 1943, executing 12 Polish prisoners before other inmates as collective punishment for escapes and civilian contacts. The victims, all from the camp’s surveyors’ labor unit, were hanged on gallows built in front of the camp kitchen during an Auschwitz I roll call. The SS orchestrated this reprisal following prisoner escapes from the surveyors’ detail and unauthorized communication between inmates and civilians. Camp authorities used the recent escapes as a pretext to impose collective punishment.

As the Catholic Church marks the feast of St. Maximilian Kolbe, the Executive Director of the Catholic Mobilizing Network shares her hopes for the future abolition of the death penalty in the United States. By Vatican News August 14 marks the liturgical feast of St. Maximilian Kolbe, who gave his life in 1941 in the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz to save the life of a young father. Now patron saint of the pro-life movement, the Polish priest provides a guiding light to Catholics who seek to abolish the death penalty, such as the Catholic Mobilizing Network, a nonprofit working for that goal in the United States.

Whoever saves one life saves the world entire Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland — In a place built to erase human dignity, one man gave his life so another could live. The story of Father Maximilian Kolbe, Auschwitz inmate number 16670, stands as a lasting testament to the power of faith and sacrifice in the darkest of times. Kolbe, a Polish Franciscan friar, was arrested by Nazi authorities in February 1941. His crime: offering shelter to Jews and members of the Polish underground at his monastery in Niepokalanów, west of Warsaw. The priest had long been a thorn in the side of the Nazi regime. Through his religious publications and missionary work, he had spoken out against the rising tide of hatred sweeping across Europe.

Each year on January 27, people across the globe observe International Holocaust Remembrance Day. It was on this day 79 years ago Nazi Germany's largest death camp Auschwitz was liberated — by which point upwards of one million prisoners had been killed. It is on this grim occasion that the author, a Jewish cantor, reflects on the aftermath of Alabama's killing of Kenneth Eugene Smith with the novel use of nitrogen hypoxia...

PHOENIX (AP) — An Arizona prisoner convicted in the 1984 killing of an 8-year-old girl is scheduled to be executed Wednesday in what would be the state’s second execution since officials started carrying out the death penalty in May after a nearly eight-year hiatus. Frank Atwood, 66, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at the state prison in Florence for his murder conviction in the killing of Vicki Hoskinson, whose body was found in the desert. She went missing months earlier after leaving her home in Tucson to drop a birthday card in a nearby mailbox. If the execution isn’t halted by court action, Atwood will be the second Arizona prisoner to be put to death in less than a month. The execution of Clarence Dixon last month ended Arizona’s halt to executions that was blamed on the difficulty of obtaining lethal injection drugs and criticism that a 2014 execution in the state was botched. Death penalty opponents worry that Arizona will now start executing a steady stream of prisoner...

Jim Klein participated in 17 executions for the state of Arizona. With executions scheduled to resume, Klein is ready to share his story. Jim Klein says he stopped talking to his family about his job early in his career. “They didn’t want to hear about it.” he said. “They just couldn’t process it. They didn’t understand how I could deal with so much death.” And so for the past 30 years, Klein, now 68, kept his thoughts mostly to himself about his time working as an executioner. Arizona, like many states, has laws on the books that protect the identity of “any person ... who participates in or performs any ancillary function(s) in the execution, including the source of the execution chemicals, and any information contained in records that would identify those persons.” Corrections officers who took part in executions in the past rarely speak about their participation. But as Arizona resumes the death penalty this week, Klein decided to talk with The Arizona Republic about the executions...

Officials say mobile crematoria and heavy machinery being brought into city to remove thousands of dead, rubble, as mayor claims stark parallel with infamous Holocaust death camp Russia has turned the city of Mariupol into a Nazi-style death camp, burning bodies and blocking humanitarian convoys to hide evidence of mass killings and other atrocities there, Ukrainian officials said Wednesday. Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boichenko said more than 5,000 civilians — including at least 210 children — had been killed during weeks of Russian bombardment and street fighting in the southern Ukrainian city, which has been held under a devastating siege. He said Russian forces bombed hospitals, including one where 50 people burned to death. Mariupol city officials said in a message posted to Telegram that mobile crematoria were being operated by Russian officials to burn the bodies of those that had been slaughtered, imagery that raised the specter of the 20th century’s greatest crime. “The world has not...

"We're basically saying what the Nazis did was OK," said Phoenix Holocaust Association vice president Janice Friebaum. Major Jewish organizations have harshly condemned a recent measure by the US state of Arizona to execute death row convicts through the use of a Zyklon B gas chamber, the same poison used by the Nazis to kill Jews in concentration camps during the Holocaust. The state has had a gas chamber since 1949, and since then it has only been used twice, the most recent of which was in 1999 to execute German national Walter LaGrand. The use of Zyklon B is seen by the state as being an "upgrade" of their preexisting gas chamber. Jewish organizations have come out against this, however, and have drawn comparisons to its use in the Holocaust. "Uniformly, Holocaust survivors and their descendants are nothing short of horrified of this form of execution being utilized," said Janice Friebaum, vice president of the Phoenix Holocaust Association whose f...

PHOENIX - Reports that Arizona has restored its gas chamber is sparking new debate about executions. The chamber is housed at the state prison in Florence, and hasn’t been used in more than two decades, But that could change in the coming months. On June 10, the Associated Press reported that the state has purchased materials to make hydrogen cyanide gas, which was used in some past U.S. executions and which the Nazis used to kill 865,000 Jews at the Auschwitz concentration camp alone. Gas chamber last used in 1999 According to the Associated Press, Walter LaGrand, the second of two German brothers sentenced to death for killing a bank manager in Southern Arizona in 1982, was the last person in America to be put to death in a gas chamber. Witness reportedly said it took more than 10 minutes of gasping and convulsing before LaGrand died. According to the Associated Press, Walter and his brother, Karl, both chose the gas chamber in hopes that courts would find the method unconstitutional...

"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. RELATED |  Arizona ‘refurbishes’ its gas chamber to prepare for executions, documents reveal 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. RELATED |  Arizona Prepares for Executions With Gas Used in Holocaust Death Camps 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 stoo...

Nearly 30 years after Arizona voters abolished the gas chamber, the Department of Corrections is buying supplies to make poison gas and preparing to execute death row inmates. It doesn't mean they will be put to death in a hydrogen cyanide cloud, only that they can be. Arizona law lets inmates convicted of death penalty offenses before November 1992 choose how they want to die: gas or lethal injection. But lawyers for two men at the top of the state's execution list said the Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation & Reentry can't be trusted to carry out either method correctly. The agency already has botched the purchase of gas chamber chemicals and is misleading the public about pharmaceuticals needed to properly administer the death penalty, the lawyers said. State bought potassium cyanide instead of sodium cyanide The lawyers point to documents showing state officials purchased a different type of cyanide than the one called for in the state's newly published p...