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Thread: Arizona Capital Punishment News

  1. #151
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Actually the states don't have to wait on SCOTUS to act on the appeals, it's just a formality that they don't break.
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  2. #152
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    That’s not the problem though. SCOTUS refused to let him file for cert after he ran out the time limit
    Thank you for the adventure - Axol

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    Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever. - Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt

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  3. #153
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bobsicles View Post
    Atwood can't be executed anyway cause he hasn't been denied cert yet
    Long never sought cert before FL executed him. It's not mandatory. If you miss the deadline then the lower decision stands - in this case the 9th Circuit upholding his sentence. If simply not seeking cert would preclude execution then inmates would do that all the time.
    Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products.

    "They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma, these people. The root cause of this is there's no discipline in the homes, they don't go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it's disgusting." - Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters

  4. #154
    Senior Member Frequent Poster Fact's Avatar
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    Virginia used to routinely seek execution dates after the mandate issued from the Fourth Circuit denying habeas relief. Timeliness issues aside, certiorari is completely discretionary.

  5. #155
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Neil's Avatar
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    Texas has done so a few times as well most recently with John Gardner.

  6. #156
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    All I know is that Atwood is a good first choice for what he did to Vicki Lynn Hoskinson.
    Thank you for the adventure - Axol

    Tried so hard and got so far, but in the end it doesn’t even matter - Linkin Park

    Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever. - Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt

    I’m going to the ghost McDonalds - Garcello

  7. #157
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    Arizona ‘refurbishes’ its gas chamber to prepare for executions, documents reveal

    By Ed Pilkington
    The Guardian

    The state of Arizona is preparing to kill death row inmates using hydrogen cyanide, the same lethal gas that was deployed at Auschwitz.

    Documents obtained by the Guardian reveal that Arizona’s department of corrections has spent more than $2,000 in procuring the ingredients to make cyanide gas. The department bought a solid brick of potassium cyanide in December for $1,530.

    It also purchased sodium hydroxide pellets and sulfuric acid which are intended to be used to generate the deadly gas. The gas chamber itself, built in 1949 and disused for 22 years, has been dusted off and, according to the department, “refurbished”.

    Over the past few months the Republican-controlled state has moved aggressively to restart its deeply flawed execution system. The death penalty has been in abeyance in Arizona for seven years following the gruesomely botched lethal injection of Joseph Wood in 2014.

    Last month, the Guardian revealed that Arizona spent a jaw-dropping $1.5m on a batch of pentobarbital in October, a sedative which it now hopes to use as its main lethal injection method.

    The Guardian’s documents, obtained through public records requests, show that officials have also gone to considerable lengths to revive the state’s mothballed gas chamber, housed at ASPC-Florence. A series of tests were conducted last August to appraise its “operability”.

    Seals on windows and the door were checked to ensure airtightness, and drains cleared of blockage. Water was used in the tests in place of the deadly chemicals, with a smoke grenade ignited to simulate the gas.

    Some of the techniques used to test the safety of the chamber were astonishingly primitive, the documents reveal. Prison officials checked for gas seepages with a candle.

    The flame of the candle was held up to the sealed windows and door and if its flame remained steady and did not flicker the chamber was deemed to be airtight. In December staff declared the vessel “operationally ready”.

    The preparation of cyanide gas executions presents Arizona death row inmates with a Hobson’s choice between two questionable ways to die. Should they opt for the gas chamber, they should be mindful of the last time anybody was gassed by the state.

    Walter LaGrand, a German national, was sentenced to death for a 1982 bungled armed bank robbery in which a man was killed. The Tucson Citizen published an eyewitness account of his 1999 execution in which he displayed “agonizing choking and gagging” and took 18 minutes to die.

    “The witness room fell silent as a mist of gas rose, much like steam in a shower, and Walter LaGrand became enveloped in a cloud of cyanide vapor,” the Citizen reported. “He began coughing violently – three or four loud hacks – and made a gagging sound before falling forward.”

    The newspaper recorded that over many minutes the inmate’s head and arms twitched, and his hands were “red and clenched”.

    Should an inmate choose death by lethal injection – the method widely deployed among death penalty states as the supposedly scientific and humane alternative to gas, electric chair or firing squad – they will also find the last time it was used in Arizona it was anything but humane.

    Joseph Wood took almost two hours to die when Arizona experimented on him with 15 doses of a then little-used concoction of lethal injection drugs. An eye witness told the Guardian that he counted Wood gasp and gulp 660 times.

    In its current rush to restart executions, Arizona has selected two inmates as likely candidates to go first out of a current death row population of 115 people. They are Frank Atwood, 65, sentenced to death for killing an eight-year-old girl, Vicki Lynne Hoskinson, in 1984; and Clarence Dixon, 65, convicted of the 1978 murder of a college student, Deana Bowdoin.

    A member of Atwood’s legal team, Joseph Perkovich of Phillips Black, told the Guardian that it was improper for the state to be hurrying towards setting an execution date when the pandemic had impeded investigation into his client’s possible innocence for more than a year. As for Atwood’s choice between lethal injection or gas, Perkovich said: “Neither option is tenable.”

    The attorney pointed out that there is a discrepancy between the potassium cyanide that has been obtained by the corrections department and the state’s execution protocol which stipulates that sodium cyanide must be used. “This is not a small detail – the specific compound is vitally important,” he said.

    Perkovich added that “Frank Atwood is prepared to die. He is a man of Greek Orthodox faith and is preparing for this moment. But he does not want to be tortured and subjected to a botched execution.”

    Inmates who choose the gas chamber are strapped into a chair in the centre of the vessel. Coloured levers are then used to drop the sodium cyanide into a pot of sulfuric acid under the chair, releasing the deadly hydrogen cyanide into the air.

    Once the prisoner is dead, the gas is neutralized with ammonia until the chamber is safe to enter. “As a precautionary method,” the death chamber protocol says, “it is recommended that the team removing the body wear gas masks and rubber gloves and that the hair of the deceased inmate be ruffled in order to allow any residually trapped gas to escape.”

    The documents record how prison staff engaged in role play during last year’s tests. Guards acted out as inmates who resisted going to their death, screaming: “This is murder”, “I’m innocent”, “You’re putting me down like an animal”, and “This is against everything America stands for”.

    Despite Arizona’s best efforts to present its gas chamber as a reputable institution, the horrors of the past hang heavily over it. The Nazis used hydrogen cyanide under the trade name Zyklon B to kill more than 1 million people in gas chambers in Auschwitz and other extermination camps.

    Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said: “You have to wonder what Arizona was thinking in believing that in 2021 it is acceptable to execute people in a gas chamber with cyanide gas. Did they have anybody study the history of the Holocaust?”

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...ions-documents

  8. #158
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    Good job Arizona. Now Atwood and Dixon can’t try to delay their fates
    Thank you for the adventure - Axol

    Tried so hard and got so far, but in the end it doesn’t even matter - Linkin Park

    Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever. - Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt

    I’m going to the ghost McDonalds - Garcello

  9. #159
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Julius View Post

    Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said: “You have to wonder what Arizona was thinking in believing that in 2021 it is acceptable to execute people in a gas chamber with cyanide gas. Did they have anybody study the history of the Holocaust?”
    OF COURSE HE DOES. Dunham you know we were gassing people BEFORE THE HOLOCAUST EVEN HAPPENED.
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  10. #160
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Neil's Avatar
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    What Arizona is doing right now shows competence. They are testing the gas chamber's capabilities. They are making sure that the wave of inmates they have that are warrant ready can’t weasel out of being executed.

    South Carolina on the other kneecapped themselves with the firing squad amendment. A huge pathetic “conservative” senate majority accepted it from a Democratic senator who was “morally” opposed to executions.

    It’s not surprising their GOP is very weak for such a conservative state. After all, Nikki Haley was Governor there.
    Last edited by Neil; 05-28-2021 at 10:43 AM.

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