On June 15, 1994, dramatic events unfolded during the execution of capital punishment. David Lawson, sentenced to death for a capital felony, was scheduled to be killed by hydrogen cyanide in the gas chamber located in the state prison of Raleigh, North Carolina-but the prisoner refused to assist his executioners.[1] Lawson repeatedly held his breath for as long as possible and took only short breaths in between.[2] Lawson exhibited enormous willpower, calling out to both executioners and witnesses throughout his execution:

At first his cry was clearly audible but as the minutes went by he became less and less understandable and finally, more than ten minutes into the execution, there was just a mutter. He was declared dead only after eighteen minutes. The witnesses to the execution were horrified. The warden of the prison who had also supervised the execution was so shaken that he resigned. Because of this execution fiasco, executions with poison gas have been abandoned for a short period of time in the USA and replaced with lethal injections.

In early March 1999, however, this horror had already been forgotten. This time, the victim was a German national. Despite intervention by the German government, Walter LaGrand was executed in the state prison at Florence, Arizona. LaGrand's death struggle against lethal cyanide gas lasted eighteen minutes. Thirty witnesses peered through a bulletproof window as the confessed, convicted murderer died horribly behind an armor-reinforced door.[3]

It is now clear to the experts, and especially to those still waiting on death row, that a quick and painless execution by gas requires the cooperation of the intended victim. Prisoners about to be gassed were usually encouraged to inhale deeply as soon as the cyanide was released in order to make their deaths come easily. However, if an intended victim was uncooperative, the execution could easily become a fiasco. By simply refusing to take the deep breaths needed to quickly ingest a lethal dose of cyanide, the agony could last for more than eighteen minutes, even under ideal conditions. Publications in the United States reveal that executions lasting from 10 to 14 minutes are the rule, rather than the exception. Amnesty International calls them "botched executions".[4],[5],[6],[7]

The method used in American execution gas chambers was introduced in 1924, and has since been improved to technical perfection. The expense to kill just one single person is tremendously high, since neither the witnesses, nor the prison personnel or the environment may be endangered by the poison gas released for such an execution. Re-inforced-glass windows, massive, heavy, hermetically-sealed steel doors, powerful ventilation systems with a device to burn the evacuated poisonous gases, and a chemical treatment of the chamber interior to neutralize all remaining traces of the poison make this execution method the most a cumbersome of all.[8]

During the last two decades of the 20^th century, the only technical expert in the United States able to build and maintain this equipment was Frederick A. Leuchter Jr., sometimes referred to in the media as "Mr. Death",[9] since his profession was the design, construction and maintenance of various kinds of execution devices.[10]

A feature article in The Atlantic Monthly (Feb. 1990), for example, factually described Leuchter as

Similarly, a lengthy New York Times article (October 13, 1990), complete with a front-page photo of Leuchter, called him

In his book about "America's Capital Punishment Industry", Stephen Trombley confirms that Leuchter is, in fact,[11]

Killing someone in a gas chamber is very dangerous for those who carry out the execution, above all because the body of the dead prisoner is saturated with lethal gas. After the execution, explains Leuchter:[12]

Bill Armontrout, warden of the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City, confirms the danger:[13]

In Leuchter's opinion, gas chamber use should be discontinued, not just because of the cruelty of this method of execution, but because of his beliefs relating to gas chambers as such:[14]

With a career built on the motto "Capital punishment, not capital torture", Leuchter takes pride in his work. He is glad to be able to ensure that condemned prisoners die painlessly, that the personnel who carry out executions are not endangered, and that taxpayer dollars are saved.

Hydrogen cyanide, is not, of course, utilized solely for the purpose of executions in American gas chambers, but for much more constructive purposes as well. Since approximately the end of WWI, hydrogen cyanide, or HCN, has been used to exterminate vermin such as bedbugs, lice, corn weevils, termites, cockroaches, and other pests. It is, of course, important to be extremely cautious while applying hydrogen cyanide in order to avoid disaster, because it is in many ways a highly dangerous poison.

Fig. 2: How to get rid of termites: Top photo: Before. Bottom photo: After.

The residents of a house in Los Angeles, California, had to learn this in a quite painful way shortly before Christmas 1947. They had hired the Guarantee Fumigation Company to destroy the termites which threatened to eat up the wooden structure. The pest controllers, however, were apparently not very competent, because when using a container of pressurized HCN to fill the house, which had been wrapped up like a Christmas present, they exceeded safe limits and pumped in too much gas. (Fig. 2).[15] Due to unknown reasons, the mixture of air and HCN, which can be highly explosive under certain circumstances, ignited during the fumigation. The resulting explosion destroyed the entire dwelling.[16]

However, hydrogen cyanide has yet another insidious characteristic: it is highly mobile. This mobility is highly welcome when it comes to killing vermin: Wherever fleas and bugs try to hide, the gas will still reach them! Unfortunately, hydrogen cyanide does not restrict itself to attack vermin. Rather, it indiscriminately seeps into the smallest cracks and even penetrates porous substances such as felt sealing materials and thin walls, thereby leaking into areas where it is not welcome. The failure on the part of disinfestors to ensure that all places to be fumigated are adequately sealed off have been described in toxicological literature:[17]

But the dangers of this type of poison gas are not merely restricted to persons in the same house in which fumigation is taking place. Large quantities of gas may penetrate the open air and endanger the entire neighborhood, as shown by an accident in the fall of 1995 in a Croatian holiday resort:[18]

But that is still not all: on top of this, hydrogen cyanide is also a tenacious poison. It adheres wherever it is utilized, especially in a moist environment. Deadly cyanide gas continues to evaporate slowly from moist objects for hours and days, involving a permanent environmental hazard where sufficient ventilation cannot be assured. This is emphasized by an especially dramatic and simultaneously macabre accident in the United States in the fall of 1998:

Another case, which occurred somewhat differently, nevertheless led to an accident which was no less tragic. Salts of cyanide, which release cyanide gas in the presence of moisture, are used for the separation of gold and silver during the processing of precious metals. In the case in question, a company was engaged in the processing of the cyanide-rich residues of such chemical reactions contained in large tanks, which is not without risk. The employer directed the workers, who were not equipped with gas masks or protective clothing, to go into the tanks which were still releasing cyanide gas. The consequences were tragic.

Even this example fails to convey the full scope of the insidious nature of cyanide gas, since it does not just kill by means of inhalation; even a gas mask may prove insufficient, especially if a person is sweating heavily. Hydrogen cyanide is dissolved most readily on moist surfaces, and it easily penetrates the skin. This was proven by a dramatic accident in 1995 in a cave in the French city of Montérolier:[21]

Great excitement was caused by a strange occurrence in a Protestant church at Wiesenfeld, Lower Bavaria, Germany, in the spring and summer of 1977. The congregation had renovated the deteriorating church at great expense during the previous year, but now they faced a disaster. Huge blue stains were found to have formed in all parts of the plastered interior of the church. The experts having renovated the church were now called in for consultation, and found themselves confronted by a riddle which was only solved by a chemical analysis of the stained portions of the walls. The entire interior surface of the church was impregnated by Iron Blue. No explanation could be found for this in the literature. It nevertheless proved possible to reconstruct the sequence of events.

A few weeks after the re-plastering of the church with a water-resistant cement mortar, the entire church had been fumigated with Zyklon B (hydrogen cyanide) to exterminate woodworm in the choir stalls. The hydrogen cyanide, released by the Zyklon B, did not just kill woodworm: it also reacted chemically with the plaster. The hydrogen cyanide contained in the Zyklon reacted with the iron oxides contained in quantities of 1-2% in all plasters, thus forming Iron Blue, a highly stable compound well-know for centuries.[22]

Reports of blue pigmentation of walls resulting from fumigation with hydrogen cyanide for the destruction of vermin in areas with moist, ferrous plaster are well-known in technical literature, as shown by a recent survey.[23] The necessary prerequisite for this reaction appears to be that the fumigated plaster must be new and must exhibit high humidity. In other cases, there was also damage to the structure and interior installations, but no blue stains, perhaps because the plaster was old and had already set.[24]

Next Chapter
Back to Table of Contents