Past to Present: 100 Years Since the United States’ First Lethal Gas Execution, a Recently Renewed Practice

Today, February 8, marks the 100-year anniver­sary of the first lethal gas exe­cu­tion in the United States, exact­ly two weeks after Alabama car­ried out the first exe­cu­tion using nitrogen gas. 

On February 8, 1924, Nevada exe­cut­ed Gee Jon, a Chinese immi­grant con­vict­ed of killing the own­er of a laun­dro­mat, using cyanide gas. A fel­low pris­on­er, Thomas Russell, was also sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed the same day but was resen­tenced to life by the Board of Pardons and Parole the pre­vi­ous evening. The gas cham­ber, which was built by pris­on­ers, was first test­ed on two kit­tens, who died with­in 15 sec­onds of the gas’ release. During the test, a small leak was iden­ti­fied and sub­se­quent­ly fixed so it would not pose any dan­ger to wit­ness­es, 30 of whom attend­ed Mr. Gee’s exe­cu­tion. According to the Reno Gazette-Journal, four Carson City prison guards resigned two days pri­or to the exe­cu­tion to avoid tak­ing part. Four physi­cians, at the request of the prison war­den, were present for the exe­cu­tion and, from out­side the gas cham­ber, deter­mined that Mr. Gee had no signs of life after six min­utes. Due to the lev­el of gas present in the cham­ber, prison staff wait­ed two and a half hours before open­ing the cham­ber; an autop­sy was not permitted. 

The exe­cu­tion, which was Nevada’s first exe­cu­tion since 1916, was wide­ly report­ed as a suc­cess by Prison Warden D. S. Dickerson and sup­port­ed by physi­cians as pain­less and humane. ​“The exe­cu­tion was a suc­cess, but the method of appli­ca­tion is dan­ger­ous,” said Prison Warden Dickerson, who pre­ferred anoth­er method, like fir­ing squad, that was safer for wit­ness­es and staff. When the body of Mr. Gee was removed from the gas cham­ber, one of the physi­cians present, med­ical reserve offi­cer for the U.S. Army Maj D. A. Turner, claimed to be able to resus­ci­tate him, though his request was denied; a month lat­er, the Nevada State Journal report­ed that Dr. Turner repeat­ed these claims when address­ing the Reno Lions Club, adding that ​“Gee Jon died of cold and exposure.” 

After the exe­cu­tion, reporter Arthur Brisbane wrote, ​“If gov­ern­ment insists on killing it should kill as sav­ages usu­al­ly do, chok­ing with a rope, cut­ting off the head, or in some oth­er sav­age fash­ion. Science and sci­en­tists should not be dis­graced in the oper­a­tion.” His arti­cle, pub­lished in the Nevada State Journal, con­tin­ued ​“While ​‘civ­i­liza­tion’ was killing” Mr. Gee, five oth­ers were elec­tro­cut­ed in Texas, result­ing in one warden’s res­ig­na­tion and anoth­er stat­ing: “‘Pulling the switch of an elec­tric chair means noth­ing to me.’” Countering this apa­thy, Mr. Brisbane wrote, ​“It means some­thing to civ­i­liza­tion. Ten thou­sand years hence this will be spo­ken of as an age that used to hang, shoot, asphyx­i­ate, kill with elec­tric­i­ty, and then fool­ish­ly expect crim­i­nals, with the unde­vel­oped mind of chil­dren, NOT to imi­tate a mur­der­ous exam­ple set by government itself.” 

On January 25, 2024, Alabama exe­cut­ed Kenneth Eugene Smith using the exper­i­men­tal method of nitro­gen hypox­ia. Mr. Smith inhaled the nitro­gen gas through a mask, rather than a gas cham­ber, and wit­ness­es report­ed he ini­tial­ly ​“shook and writhed.” Witnesses were not allowed to take phones or watch­es with them and had to rely on a clock with no sec­ond hand, result­ing in a com­pli­cat­ed exe­cu­tion time­line. Although it took 32 min­utes from the cur­tains being opened to Mr. Smith being declared dead, the exe­cu­tion was deemed a ​“suc­cess” by state officials. 

Since 1976, there have been 12 lethal gas exe­cu­tions con­duct­ed by six states (Alabama (1), Arizona (2), California (2), Mississippi (4), Nevada (1), and North Carolina (2)). Mr. Smith’s exe­cu­tion was the first lethal gas exe­cu­tion since 1999. Execution wit­ness­es of pre­vi­ous lethal gas exe­cu­tions have sim­i­lar­ly observed signs of dis­tress to lengthy exe­cu­tions. Attorney Jim Belanger wrote of his client Donald Harding’s 1992 exe­cu­tion in Arizona: ​“It took 10 min­utes and 31 sec­onds for Don Harding to die. For at least eight of those min­utes, he was writhing in agony.” Dan Morain, one of 18 jour­nal­ists among a total of 48 offi­cial wit­ness­es, described the 1992 exe­cu­tion of Robert Alton Harris as a ​“macabre and sur­re­al scene” and con­clud­ed that he would nev­er attend anoth­er exe­cu­tion. The inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty has crit­i­cized past exe­cu­tions as they did with Mr. Smith’s: the German Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin called the 1999 exe­cu­tion of German nation­al Walter LaGrande, which took 18 min­utes, ​“bar­bar­ic.”

Currently two oth­er states, Mississippi and Oklahoma, have autho­rized nitro­gen hypox­ia as an alter­na­tive exe­cu­tion method. The head of Oklahoma’s prison sys­tem, Steven Harpe, and his chief of staff, Justin Farris, have said they’re also explor­ing using the method as an option. But Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt has stat­ed that his oppo­si­tion to switch­ing to nitro­gen gas. ​“I know exact­ly how it works. I know exact­ly what they’re doing. I don’t want to change a process that’s work­ing,” he said. Legislation to intro­duce nitro­gen hypox­ia as an exe­cu­tion method is under review in the Nebraska and Ohio leg­is­la­tures, both states that have alleged­ly had dif­fi­cul­ty obtain­ing the chem­i­cals required for lethal injec­tion exe­cu­tions. Airgas, a pri­vate indus­tri­al gas dis­trib­u­tor, has already announced its oppo­si­tion to sup­ply­ing nitro­gen gas for executions.