[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----ARK., MO., NEB., CALIF., USA

[Rick Halperin]

June 6



ARKANSAS:

Man pleads not guilty to murder, arson in deadly fire at Hot Springs apartment 
complex



A man is pleading not guilty to capital murder and arson in a fire that left 1 
man dead and several injured at a Hot Springs apartment back in March.

Rayson Edward Clayton, 22 , is charged in the death of Wilibando Areyano 
Guerrero after police say he intentionally set fire to Polo Run Apartments 
after a dispute with a family member that lived there.

Clayton pleaded not guilty to the charges on Monday.

A gag order was also issued, restricting those who are involved in the case to 
share any information or comment publicly.

Prosecutors say they are still seeking the death penalty against Clayton.

(source: KATV news)








MISSOURI:

Death row inquiry on hold after Greitens' resignation



The fate of a Missouri death row inmate whose execution was halted last year 
after DNA evidence raised questions about his case is on hold as a result of 
former Gov. Eric Greitens' resignation.

Marcellus Williams, 49, was hours away from being put to death in August when 
Greitens halted the execution. Williams was convicted of fatally stabbing 
former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Lisha Gayle during a 1998 burglary at 
her suburban St. Louis home, but DNA evidence found on the murder weapon 
matched another unknown person.

Greitens, a Republican, appointed a board of inquiry made up of five retired 
judges to look into the case. The board was scheduled to meet Tuesday in the 
governor's office but canceled, citing confusion about whether its authority 
continues after Greitens resigned last week.

Greitens left office after months of investigations related to a 2015 
extramarital affair and his alleged use of a charity donor list for political 
purposes. He was replaced by Republican Lt. Gov. Mike Parson.

It's unclear whether Parson will keep the inquiry board intact. The board has 
suspended its work pending guidance from Parson, the governor's spokeswoman, 
Kelli Jones, said.

Nimrod Chapel, president of the Missouri State Conference of the NAACP and a 
supporter of Williams', urged the governor to allow the panel to continue its 
work.

"Gov. Greitens' issues are their own, but one thing he got right was ensuring 
that we are going to be dead certain that we are executing the right person for 
the right crime. I think that's a piece of leadership we need to hold onto in 
Missouri, and one that we need to continue," Chapel said.

Despite the DNA claim, St. Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch said last year 
that there was "zero possibility" Williams was innocent, citing ample amounts 
of other evidence.

Prosecutors said Williams broke a window pane to get inside Gayle's home on 
Aug. 11, 1998, heard water running in the shower, and found a large butcher 
knife. When Gayle came downstairs, she was stabbed 43 times. Her purse and her 
husband's laptop were stolen.

Authorities said Williams stole a jacket to conceal blood on his shirt. 
Williams' girlfriend later asked him why he would wear a jacket on such a hot 
day. The girlfriend said she later saw the laptop in the car and that Williams 
sold it a day or 2 later.

Prosecutors also cited testimony from Henry Cole, who shared a cell with 
Williams in 1999 while Williams was jailed in St. Louis on unrelated charges. 
Cole told prosecutors that Williams confessed to the killing and offered 
details about it.

Williams' attorneys responded that the girlfriend and Cole were both convicted 
felons who were out for a $10,000 reward.

Gayle, 42, was a reporter at the Post-Dispatch from 1981 to 1992. She left 
journalism to do social work.

(source: Associated Press)

******************

NAACP, local advocates host rally to free Marcellus Williams



Around 25 people gathered Tuesday at the steps of the Missouri Supreme Court to 
rally for the exoneration of Marcellus Williams, a death-row inmate they say is 
innocent.

The rally, hosted by the NAACP and Missourians for Alternatives to the Death 
Penalty, sought not only to bring attention to the case of Williams, but also 
the need for criminal justice reform in Missouri. Williams' only son, Marcellus 
Williams II, and a coalition of local advocates - including at least 2 
Missourians who were exonerated after spending decades in prison - attended.

"We're here to support justice, equality and fairness in the state of 
Missouri," said Nimrod Chapel, Jr., president of the Missouri State Conference 
of the NAACP. "Today is a day for Marcellus Williams, a man who needs justice 
now more than ever."

Williams was convicted in 2001 for the murder of St. Louis Post-Dispatch 
reporter Lisha Gayle. In 2015, the Missouri Supreme Court stayed his initial 
execution date to test the DNA evidence from the scene for the first time. In 
response to public outcry maintaining Williams' innocence, former Gov. Eric 
Greitens stayed Williams' 2nd execution date in August 2017, just hours before 
he was set to be put to death. Greitens commissioned a 5-person board of 
inquiry to review Williams' case. The board was scheduled to meet early 
Tuesday, but the meeting was canceled after Greitens resigned last week.

In Greitens' final day in office, he issued 5 pardons - none included Williams.

Current Gov. Mike Parson has not commented publicly on the case, Chapel said.

Williams always has maintained his innocence. Rita Linhardt, senior staff 
associate at Missouri Catholic Conference, brought up multiple issues with 
Williams' case.

"Truth lies in the forensic evidence, none of which ties Mr. Williams to the 
crime," Linhardt said. "Neither the hairs on the victim, the fingernail 
clippings nor the bloody footprints tie Mr. Williams to the crime."

DNA tests conducted on the murder weapon did not incriminate Williams, Linhardt 
said.

The primary evidence against Williams came from 2 witnesses who were paid for 
their testimony. One admitted later that she "set up" Williams to get the 
money, according to a news release for the event.

Linhardt said that attendees seek justice not only for Williams, but also for 
Gayle, whose death was "senseless."

"Justice demands truth - the truth of what really happened that day to Ms. 
Gayle," Linhardt said.

Missouri Catholic Conference submits clemency applications to the governor for 
death-row inmates like Williams. They've submitted 87 so far - 2 of those for 
Williams, Linhardt said.

Williams' son attended Parson's swearing-in ceremony Friday, hoping to find out 
how Parson would respond to his dad's case, and to discuss prison reform.

Williams II was 9 years old when his dad was convicted. He's 27 now, but he 
said he still remembers the photos of Gayle's body - she was stabbed repeatedly 
- presented as evidence in court. When he saw them, he had to leave the room.

"It was really hard for me. I was a kid; it was painful," Williams II said. "I 
couldn't believe, and still don't, that my father was able to do something like 
this to this woman."

Williams II is now a professional fighter, but he said his battles happen 
daily, outside the ring.

"I've been fighting my whole life - that's just how it is, especially when 
you're a black man in America," Williams II said. "And people say that's the 
race card. But man, that's the 'real life' card. That's the world we live in. 
You've got to fight to be equal."

(source: myleaderpaper.org)








NEBRASKA:

'Screw this, I'm going on death row' The chilling story of the murderer who 
strangled his cellmate using a pair of socks because he was desperate to be 
executed



If you were sentenced to death, you'd imagine feeling nothing but horror. But 
for James Robertson, landing a place on death row was the ultimate goal You'd 
imagine that being sentenced to execution would be terrifying - but James 
Robertson was delighted when he heard that he was going to be killed for his 
crimes.

Robertson, a long-term prisoner, was sentenced to death in 2012 for murdering 
his cellmate, while already in a Florida jail for a string of robberies and 
assaults.

The 54-year-old has yet to be executed, and is now appearing on new documentary 
series I Am A Killer, where he talks candidly about his fight to earn the death 
penalty.

He looks like a TV villain, with a smooth shaven head and a wide smile with 
countless missing teeth.

And he is so relaxed about his sentence that he doesn't even mind whether it 
comes as a result of electrocution or lethal injection.

"I'd much rather have a needle stuck in me than be electrocuted but I could go 
either way," he says on the show, speaking in a deep southern accent. "You read 
how it's 'inhumane' but that's a load of bulls**t. You don't feel anything."

A reputation for violence

Looking at him with his hands cuffed in his lap and his eyes twitching, it 
would be natural to dismiss Robertson's death wish as a result of madness.

But the chilling truth is that he knows exactly what he's doing - and he's been 
deemed medically sane as part of his trial.

Robertson - AKA death row prisoner #322534 - has been behind bars for 37 years 
already, serving a sentence of over 100 years.

He was just 17 when he was found guilty of his first major crime - trying to 
rob a local shop to fund his cannabis habit, when he was caught in the act by a 
pair of security guards.

Robertson was arrested and given a late birthday present from the state: 10 
years in jail for burglary, aggravated assault and his attempt to resist 
arrest.

But while he was inside Charlotte County prison, Robertson earned a greater 
reputation for violence, smuggling a knife into his cell and using it 
remorselessly in his many arguments with other inmates.

The brawler added years to his sentence with every stabbing, riot, and assault 
he carried out behind bars, and ended up facing a century in prison.

He was also transferred to "close management" - solitary confinement - where 
the most dangerous inmates are cooped up on their own for 23 hours a day, 
separated from the general population with fewer privileges and no company.

Desperate to die

When he asked to be transferred back to the general population, Robertson's 
enormous rap sheet was held against him.

"You just lose all motivation," he says. "The guards humiliate you all the time 
and treat you like you're a bug.

"You're sat in that cell all day. It's inhumane."

It seems that the prospect of a life in solitary confinement was too much for 
Robertson to bear, and he decided he'd rather be dead.

He says: "Finally, I got mad and said 'I'm going to go ahead and kill 
somebody.' It was premeditated. I wanted to get on death row."

Robertson wanted a permanent change of scenery, and in 2008 his opportunity 
came.

The repeat-offender was moved into a shared cell with Frank Hart, a middle-aged 
man jailed for committing lewd acts in the presence of a child.

"I felt pretty confident I could overpower him," Robertson says. "And I didn't 
want to have a child molester in my cell. "

Night fell, and Robertson worked out that the 25 minute window between the 
guards' rounds gave him an opportunity to pounce.

He tied together a pair of socks and nudged his cellmate awake, before leaping 
onto his bed and looping the homemade garrote around Hart's skinny neck.

There was a 5-minute struggle, and then Hart stopped gasping for air and fell 
limp back onto the bed.

"I don't feel bad about it," says Robertson, breaking into a morbid, hearty 
laugh.

Life on death row

In 2009, Robertson was charged with Hart's murder, but the death penalty wasn't 
on the table as a punishment and his attorney refused to ask for it.

Outraged, the killer hired a new lawyer and demanded execution - starting a 
landmark, 3-year legal battle which ended with him being sentenced to death in 
2012.

In the years since Robertson was first jailed, grey hairs have started knotting 
in his beard, and deep lines have appeared beneath his intense eyes.

He told his lawyers that he was so set on dying sooner rather than later 
because of this - he's getting on now and he doesn't want to grow old in 
prison.

Having spent his life tormenting the vulnerable people around him, Robertson 
worried that, before long, he would become a target himself.

A prison nurse also explains in the show that death row is widely considered to 
be cushier than close management, where Robertson had spent the past few 
miserable years.

For a lonely, sun-starved man with no entertainment or company, the appeal of a 
ward with better food, TVs and a greater sense of camaraderie was obvious.

Meeting a murderer

Danny Tipping, one of the producers behind I Am A Killer, told Sun Online: 
"Very little of what you read online will tell you about the characters in the 
series.

"We weren't looking for anybody who denied their role in the crime, and these 
guys have had a lot of time to come to terms with what they've done.

"You may not feel sympathy or empathy for these guys, but you'll probably come 
to a level of understanding you hadn't expected before."

"I just got to the point where I said: 'f*** this - I'm going on death row," 
Robertson says.

But while he may have finally made it there, he's not dead yet.

He still doesn't have an execution date, and there could still be years 
standing between him and a lethal injection.

"I'm not angry or bitter," he says. "That's life and I accept full 
responsibility for the way my life turned out.

"I'm ready to go. It's over. But there's a long list on death row so I don't 
know how long I'll be waiting."

(source: thesun.co.uk)








CALIFORNIA:

Judge allows ACLU suit on California's death penalty law



A judge has refused to dismiss an American Civil Liberties Union suit 
challenging some of the state's new rules for executions, including procedures 
for determining whether a condemned inmate is sane enough to be executed.

The ACLU, on behalf of death row inmate Jarvis Lee Masters, sued state prison 
officials in February for approving rules for putting inmates to death without 
first submitting them to the public for comment.

2 previous versions of the execution standards drew thousands of public 
comments, mostly critical, and were rejected by a state administrative agency, 
which found they were inconsistent with state law. But in November 2016 state 
voters approved Proposition 66, an initiative sponsored by death penalty 
supporters to speed up executions and eliminate requirements of public notice 
and comment for procedures used to administer the lethal drugs.

State officials sought to dismiss the ACLU suit, arguing that Prop. 66 applied 
to all aspects of an execution. Requiring officials to invite and respond to 
public comment on procedures required to carry out an execution would delay the 
process, an "absurd result" in light of the ballot measure's purpose, a state 
lawyer said in a court filing.

Sponsors of Prop. 66 also argued for dismissal of the suit and said it was 
already causing delay in plans to resume executions. California has not 
conducted an execution since 2006 and has nearly 750 inmates on death row, of 
whom more than 20 have lost their final appeals of their death sentences.

But Marin County Superior Court Judge Roy Chernus ruled last week that the suit 
could proceed. Chernus did not decide whether public comment was required for 
any of the state's proposed procedures, but said the ACLU's allegations show 
"the existence of a present, actual controversy" to be resolved in legal 
proceedings.

ACLU attorney Linda Lye said the disputed issues include examinations to 
determine an inmate's sanity, methods of selecting witnesses from the public 
and the news media, the handling of execution warrants and disposition of an 
inmate's body.

Past regulations have drawn "extensive (public) comment on what's appropriate 
for a treating psychiatrist to do and not do," Lye said.

She said the judge's ruling allows the ACLU to seek evidence from the 
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation on the challenged regulations. If 
Chernus decided that any of the rules was exempt from Prop. 66, he could order 
the department to invite public comment and then to seek approval of the 
procedures from the state Office of Administrative Law, which rejected the 
earlier versions.

The department declined to comment on the ruling.

(source: Bob Egelko, San Francisco Chronicle)

********************

3 Arrested, One At Large For Killing Young Father And Leaving His Body In 
Canyons



3 teens have been arrested in connection with the brutal kidnapping, robbery, 
and murder of a man whose body was dumped in a canyon on the outskirts of Los 
Angeles, and the victim???s mother is begging a fourth man to turn himself in.

Sheriff's deputies on Wednesday found the body of 20-year-old Julian 
Hamori-Andrade, who had a 9-month old baby and another child on the way, in a 
canyon along Highway 39 in Azusa, a town at the edge of Angeles National Forest 
and the San Gabriel Mountains, according to a KCAL in Los Angeles.

Authorities believe he was beaten unconscious inside an Azusa home occupied by 
the 4 suspects before they left him for dead in the canyon, authorities said.

Police on Wednesday night initially investigated a disturbance at the home of 
the suspects, where they found a large amount of blood inside the home and 
leading outside the building.

Police arrested Hercules Dimitrios Balaskas, Francisco Amigon, and Jacob Hunter 
Elmendorf, all 19. They also issued a warrant for Matthew Martin Capiendo 
Luzon, 21, who remains at large, according to the Los Angeles County District 
Attorney's office. Police said he helped killed Hamori-Andrade with a rock and 
a broken glass pipe.

In an emotional interview with KCAL, Hamori-Andrade's mother, Andrade, pleaded 
for Luzon to surrender.

"It's just brutal, brutal, and I can't believe that these kids that young are 
capable of doing such a horrific thing to my son," she said. "Do us all a 
favor, give me that closure, please."

The 4 were charged with 1st-degree murder, kidnapping, and robbery, with added 
"special circumstances" of lying in wait to commit the crime, authorities said.

All 4 suspects face the death penalty if convicted.

(source: oxygen.com)








USA:

Noted doctor's death could affect Fell trial



The shooting death of a prominent psychiatrist, who was involved in 
high-profile cases such as the 1996 death of JonBenet Ramsey, could have an 
impact on the Donald Fell case.

Fell, 38, is facing retrial in federal court for the carjacking and kidnapping 
of Terry King, 53, of North Clarendon.

On Monday, attorneys representing Fell filed a motion in U.S. court regarding 
the death of Dr. Steven Pitt.

According to the New York Times, police believe Pitt, who was shot outside his 
office in Phoenix, Arizona, was killed by Dwight Lamon Jones.

Police said Jones was connected to Pitt, and at least 4 others, through a 
divorce case.

Jones killed himself Monday after police tracked him to a Scottsdale hotel, the 
Times reported.

Prosecutors were planning to have Pitt, 59, evaluate Fell for the penalty phase 
of Fell's trial, if Fell were to be convicted.

The government has already announced plans to seek the death penalty if Fell is 
convicted.

Fell has been accused of kidnapping King from the Rutland Shopping Plaza in 
2000. Police said Fell and his friend, Robert Lee, took King's car and brought 
her to New York, where she was bludgeoned to death.

Lee killed himself in prison.

Fell was convicted of the crimes in 2005 and sentenced to death in 2006. 
However, Fell's conviction was overturned in 2014 after Fell's attorneys 
learned one of the jurors had gone to the Rutland plaza independently and told 
the other jurors what they saw.

The start of a new trial for Fell has been delayed several times while his 
attorneys have challenged the constitutionality of the death penalty and 
whether Fell's rights would be violated if the lack of black Vermonters limits 
the potential perspectives of the jury pool.

The brief motion filed on Monday calls attention to Pitt's death because the 
"defense anticipates that the court may be working on an order regarding this 
issue."

A motion filed last June by the prosecution requested permission for Pitt to 
examine Fell. The information gathered would be used to create a report but 
that report would not be provided to prosecutors or defense attorneys unless 
Fell were convicted and his attorneys indicated they would present evidence of 
his mental health during the penalty phase of the trial.

A motion filed last June by Fell's attorneys said the government had not 
provided them reports or raw data from the examination because they said the 
reports had not been written.

No response has been filed to the motion naming Pitt.

However, the court scheduled arguments on July 23 and 24 at the U.S. court in 
Rutland to hear arguments about the death penalty and the available jury pool 
in Vermont.

(source: Rutland Herald)

*********************

The people rethinking methods of execution----The lethal injection brought an 
end to the macabre executions of the past. But after a string of botched 
deaths, its humanity is being brought into question. Is there another option?



Warning: This story contains details about methods of execution that some 
readers may find distressing.

His last words were "I love you", followed by a Muslim prayer. Then Charles 
Brooks Jr - a convicted murderer - looked away from his girlfriend and felt 
death creep in.

He was lying on a white stretcher, dressed head-to-toe in typical 80s fashion, 
including gold pants and a shirt with all the buttons open. He had an 
intravenous line in one arm and doctors hovered nearby. The man could have been 
a hospital patient.

Instead, his final moments were spent in the death chamber at a Texas prison. 
It was 1982 and this was the 1st time the lethal injection had been used to 
kill a criminal in the United States.

Before this pioneering moment, the nation's favourite mode of execution was the 
electric chair, which is today widely regarded as torture. It was so violent, 
sometimes the victim's eyeballs would pop out and rest on their cheeks. It 
regularly set hair on fire, leading guards to stash extinguishers nearby, just 
in case.

The lethal injection was hailed as kinder and more technologically advanced, 
with no blood and no screaming. One witness to Brooks' death said that he 
simply yawned and heaved his stomach. Minutes later, a doctor said "I pronounce 
this man dead."

To this day, the method is the 1st choice in every US state where capital 
punishment is legal. But it might not be quite as peaceful as it looks. The 
problem is, no one actually checked. There was no research or testing of any 
kind.

Back in 2005, when more than a thousand deaths-by-injection had already taken 
place, a team of scientists decided to take a look. Led by Leonidas Koniaris, a 
surgeon based in Indiana, Indianapolis, they studied execution records from 
Texas and Virginia and discovered that 44% of inmates may have been aware as 
they died - and likely in agonising pain. They weren't able to writhe or 
scream, because the toxic cocktail contains a muscle paralytic.

Several executions have been botched

Further research revealed one of the drugs, which was supposed to stop the 
heart, wasn't working. "What one comes away with based on the data is this 
very, very disturbing conclusion that the mechanism of death was suffocation," 
he says. "It's a nightmare scenario. If you step back, you might say we've just 
moved away from visually brutal methods of killing people." Though the majority 
of Americans agree with the death penalty, very few think that it should hurt.

Now an ongoing shortage of execution drugs has led some states to experiment 
with alternatives. As a result, several executions have been botched, including 
1 in which the man reportedly took 2 hours and 640 gasps before he died. It's 
safe to say the lethal injection is in crisis.

Is there a more humane option?

For thousands of years, execution was a spectacle to be relished by the public. 
>From drowning people in sacks with animals, to pulling out their lungs through 
their backs, humankind seemed to have no shortage of imaginative ideas - and 
few moral qualms about enacting them.

In ancient Persia, there was "schapism", in which the victim was sandwiched 
between 2 rowing boats - one on top of the other, with the person's arms and 
legs sticking out - then covered in milk and honey and left to be eaten alive 
by vermin. Meanwhile one traveller visiting Delhi, India, in the 14th Century, 
reported that elephants had been trained to slice prisoners to pieces using 
blades attached to their tusks.

The guillotine

However, interest in more humane capital punishment is hundreds of years in the 
making. The movement started in 1789, with the introduction of the guillotine. 
At the time, the French Revolution was just getting started and the heads of 
Parisian nobles were beginning to roll. After a series of gory, drawn-out 
executions - sometimes several blows of the axe were necessary - it was clear 
the process was in need of some modernising.

Enter Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, a doctor who was determined that executions 
should be conducted more humanely. He suggested using guillotines instead, 
boasting in a speech "Now, with my machine, I cut off your head in the 
twinkling of an eye, and you never feel it." They were later named after him, 
though he didn't actually invent them.

The guillotine involved a slanted knife, suspended over the victim by a wooden 
frame. Some models also featured a collection basket for their head. It proved 
to be quicker and more reliable than beheading by hand, due to the weight of 
the blade.

So how humane is it? Laboratory mice can provide some clues, because 
decapitation is a standard way of killing them for certain kinds of 
experiments, using tiny guillotines.

One study from 1975 reported that signs of conscious awareness persisted for 
between nine and 18 seconds after the animals were beheaded. This timeframe has 
since been demonstrated in other animals too, so it could be a reasonable proxy 
for humans.

Hanging

Beheading is still practiced to this day, particularly in Saudi Arabia where 
146 people were executed by beheading in 2017. But by far the most widespread 
form of execution today is hanging.

There are 2 ways this is done: the 'short drop' and the 'long drop'. As the 
names suggest, the former involves dropping the person from a lower height and 
leads to death by suffocation. This is generally considered to be extremely 
painful.

The 'long drop' is thought to be the more humane option. In the :best-case" 
scenario, the rope will break the 2nd bone on the victim's neck. The 'hangman's 
fracture' also severs the spinal cord, causing their blood pressure to plummet 
to zero in less than a second. The victim usually loses consciousness 
immediately, though it may take up to 20 minutes for their heart to stop 
beating.

The catch is that the method requires scrupulous calculation. If the drop is 
too long, the person's head will come clean off. If it's too short, they'll 
choke to death. "In my experience there are so many administration errors that 
even though a method should work in theory, because of either errors or 
incompetence, mistakes happen," says Megan McCracken of the Death Penalty 
Clinic at UC Berkeley. No one has been hanged in the US since 1996.

At a time when prison numbers are rising throughout the world, BBC Future is 
exploring several misconceptions about criminals and crime.

If some of our ideas about criminals are wrong, this has lasting implications, 
both during prison and when they re-enter society.

Firing squads

Though it's often associated with war and military crimes, death by firing 
squad has recently been adopted by the State of Utah as a back-up, and it is 
already routinely used in North Korea.

In the typical set up, a criminal is strapped to a chair with a hood over their 
head. Then five anonymous marksmen fire shots at their chest. One gun contains 
a blank.

In 1938, the very same state used the method to execute a 40-year-old man, John 
Deering, who was convicted of murder. He took the unusual decision to have 
himself hooked up to an electrocardiogram while it happened, so we have an idea 
of how swiftly the method works.

The monitor revealed that Deering's heart stopped beating just 15 seconds after 
being hit. It's impossible to know for sure how long he was in pain, but once 
again rodents can provide some hints. A 2015 study of cardiac arrests in rats 
suggests that they're usually followed by a surge of brain activity that lasts 
around 30 seconds, which may explain why those who have survived near-death 
experiences report feelings of heightened awareness. Then the world goes dark.

Electric chair

The electric chair was first invented as a more humane alternative to hanging. 
Like the guillotine and the lethal injection, it was seen as civilised and 
scientific. It all started with a chilling report commissioned by the State of 
New York in 1887, which evaluated 34 ways to kill a human.

One of its authors, a dentist, recalled hearing about a drunken dock worker who 
had touched an electric generator some years before and died instantly. He came 
up with the idea for the electric chair, which was used to dispatch an axe 
murderer just 3 years later.

The honeymoon phase didn't last long. It soon became clear to the public that 
these deaths were often messy and drawn-out, with chairs acquiring nicknames 
such as "Gruesome Gertie" and "Sizzling Sally". 9 US States have retained the 
method as a back-up, though this is controversial.

Nitrogen hypoxia

Which brings us to the latest idea: "Nitrogen hypoxia", which involves 
replacing air with an inert gas such as nitrogen or helium. It first gained 
traction after a BBC documentary presented by former Conservative MP Michael 
Portillo. In How to Kill a Human Being, he declared that the method is "a 
perfect killing device".

For a start, air is 78% nitrogen anyway, so it's easy to get hold of. The 
method is also a surprisingly quick demise. One study from the 1960s found that 
volunteers breathing pure nitrogen lost consciousness in around 17-20 seconds. 
Based on animal studies, it's thought that they would have stopped breathing 
after 3 seconds.

And due to a quirk of biology it's apparently painless. That's because the body 
can't actually detect a lack of oxygen - just an excess of carbon dioxide, 
which acidifies the blood and causes that aching feeling in your legs after 
exercise. This means it doesn't feel like suffocation.

So what does it feel like?

John Levinson, a cardiologist and pilot based in Boston, Massachusetts, has 
some insights. Some years ago he was flying his prized Mooney plane at 23,000 
feet (7km) , a height at which the Earth's atmosphere is thinner and pilots 
must use supplemental oxygen.

Then he did something risky: he tilted up a corner of his mask and kept 
breathing. "After about 30 seconds I felt truly weird," he says. "I didn't have 
hallucinations, or pain, or confusion, I just felt weird. It wasn't like 
alcohol or any other substance like that."

The subtle symptoms of hypoxia make it particularly deadly to pilots at high 
altitude, who may not recognise that anything is wrong. It's thought to have 
claimed the life of a man earlier this year, who appeared unconscious in his 
small plane before going missing over the Gulf of Mexico.

In Levinson's case, he was flying with his instructor, who would have brought 
the plane down safely in the event that he passed out. The idea was to get a 
sense of what hypoxia is like, so that he could recognise when it was happening 
in the future. Years later, while flying with his wife, he started to get the 
same weird feeling. He recognised it immediately and fixed a kink in his oxygen 
line before anyone got hurt.

3 US States have now authorised the method as a back-up. But is this just 
another mistake?

No pharmaceutical company wants its drugs used to kill people

Robert Dunham, a litigator and the Executive Director of the Death Penalty 
Information Center, certainly thinks so. "The American Veterinary Medical 
Association and World Animal Protection both say that nitrogen hypoxia is 
inappropriate for veterinary euthanasia," he says. "It's not quick as has been 
advertised - cats and dogs are aware of their impending death before they lose 
consciousness and it takes at least seven minutes to put to death a pig."

One of the primary issues is that the method relies on the cooperation of the 
prisoner: if they hold their breath, or their breathing is too shallow, it 
might take much longer to kill them. "I understand, of course, the theory 
behind it, that suggests it would be a humane method," says McCracken. "But 
that is a far cry from how it would actually be performed in an execution 
chamber."

According to Dunham, in all likelihood the victim would have to be 
anaesthetised first. And this brings us back to the issues facing the lethal 
injection: no pharmaceutical company wants its drugs used to kill people.

"The key problem the United States has is that it doesn't want the gruesome or 
visceral aspects of capital punishment. It wants the prisoner executed, but it 
doesn't want on its conscience that it's brutally killing somebody. That's an 
internal contradiction," he says.

"When it comes to execution, I think people need to understand that the death 
penalty is not a humane act."

(source: BBC News)