In 1994, when support for capital punishment peaked at a whopping 80 percent, the use of the gas chamber was deemed "cruel and unusual" in court and effectively discontinued as a means of execution. The last execution using poison gas in the United States took place in 1999.
In the context of this current debate, Scott Christianson's newest book, "Last Gasp: the Rise and Fall of the American Gas Chamber," is especially interesting. Christianson, an author, reporter and historian, gives a detailed history of the creation of the gas chamber, explains how it came into use as a seemingly more humane way to execute people and traces the use of poison gas from its American origins to the battlefields of WWI to its use in the Holocaust.
How did the gas chamber first come about?
Everyone knows the horrors of the Holocaust but most Americans are not aware that the gas chamber was invented in the United States, and was first used in the '20s, to execute criminals. After WWI, which saw the first widespread use of poison gases, it became a method of execution that was actively promoted by Americans who were part of the eugenics movement. They advocated the use of the gas chamber to kill not only criminals but other classes of individuals who were deemed to be unfit or undesirable.
Source: Salon, Aug. 2, 2010
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