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...
Striving for a World without Capital Punishment