So I searched my local library, and came up with this title: The Last Gasp, The rise and fall of the American gas chamber

I am about 100 pages in, and have not been able to figure out if the writer is pro or anti, but he starts the book with a compelling argument that the American Gas Chamber was a direct precursor to the Nazi's use of gas for the Holocaust in WWII.

I am currently reading about the early 1900's and Nevada's 1st execution by Gas, and then Colorado deciding it would be their new execution method.  They detail construction of the chamber, methods, witness reactions.  So far not a bad read.

They also speak about the time from conviction to execution:In Arizona, as elsewhere in those days,m the process of condemning a prisoner to death moved at a brisk pace compared to today's standards: executions were generally carried out within several months of the crime and only a few months after the verdict.

So now they want to try a new drug, and the challenges begin before there is even an execution scheduled.

Lawyers say Arkansas to use untried execution drug
APNewsBreak: Lawyers say Arkansas plans to use untried drug to execute death row inmates

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) -- Arkansas plans to put prisoners to death with a drug that apparently hasn't been used in a U.S. execution, and lawyers for condemned inmates warn that it could take longer for someone to die from it than from other lethal injection drugs.

Arkansas Department of Correction spokeswoman Shea Wilson told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the state plans to use phenobarbital, along with lorazepam, in lethal injections. None are currently scheduled, but Arkansas recently passed a law that will allow the state to resume executions.

Both phenobarbital and lorazepam are used to relieve anxiety. Phenobarbital, which is a barbiturate or a kind of depressant drug, is also used to control seizures.

In a letter obtained by the AP, federal public defender Jenniffer Horan told Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe that phenobarbital takes effect more slowly than other drugs used to execute prisoners and that it carries a "substantial risk of a lingering and inhumane death."

"No state has ever used Phenobarbital in a lethal injection procedure, and for good reason," wrote Horan, whose office represents a number of Arkansas death row inmates. "Throughout the history of lethal injection, states have preferred ultra-short-acting barbiturates that cause rapid unconsciousness and death. Phenobarbital, however, has a long onset of action."

Richard Dieter, the executive director of the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center, also said states have never used phenobarbital in executions.

Arkansas is not alone in seeking different drugs to be used in lethal injections. A manufacturer of propofol, the anesthetic blamed for Michael Jackson's death, said last year that it wouldn't sell the drug for use in U.S. executions, causing a setback for Missouri and other states looking for an alternative after other drug makers also objected to their products' use in lethal injections.

"There is some uncertainty out there even in obtaining some of those drugs so I think states are ... looking into alternatives that might be more readily compounded or available," Dieter said.

Arkansas's last execution was in 2005. The state is seeking to resume executions after legislators this year rewrote a lethal injection law that the state Supreme Court struck down in 2012.

The court ruled that Arkansas legislators had given the Department of Correction too much control over execution procedures. The new law says the state must use a lethal dose of a barbiturate, but it leaves it up to the Department of Correction to determine which drug.

Until Tuesday, corrections officials hadn't said publicly which drug or drugs they plan to use.

A copy of the state's lethal injection procedure, also obtained by the AP on Tuesday, lists phenobarbital and lorazepam as the chemicals to be used.

Wilson, the correction spokeswoman, said phenobarbital was one of the drugs "that the federal public defender listed in a previous lawsuit as an FDA-approved barbiturate."

Horan's office declined to comment beyond the letter to the governor, but in the letter, Horan said phenobarbital has not been approved by the FDA.

No one at the FDA immediately responded to an after-hours phone message seeking comment.

Beebe spokesman Matt DeCample said he hadn't seen Horan's letter, which asks the governor to review the Department of Correction's decision to use phenobarbital.

Fiction, about a Hangman in the wild west.  So far so good, but again it is Fiction.

I am about 100 pages in so far, it is a good read, and is not biased one way or the other.  Just the facts.  Have come across a few interesting things I will add soon

I am torn over this, as I live in CT.  But feel we can save a buttload of $$ if we grant his wish.

Connecticut home invasion murderer volunteers for execution
By Mary Ellen Godin | Reuters – 10 hrs ago

NAUGATUCK, Connecticut (Reuters) - One of two men sentenced to die for the Connecticut home invasion killings of a mother and her daughters wants to abandon his appeals and seek execution, the Hartford Courant reported on Thursday.

In a one-page handwritten letter received by the newspaper, Steven Hayes said he wants to be put to death for killing Jennifer Hawke-Petit, who he raped and strangled, and her daughters Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11, who died of smoke inhalation after the family home was set on fire.

Hayes, 49, and Joshua Komisarjevsky, 32, were convicted and sentenced to death for the three murders and for beating Hawke-Petit's husband, Dr. William Petit Jr., the only survivor of the 2007 crime.

Both Hayes and Komisarjevsky had appealed.

"I declared to my defense team and the DOC (Department of Corrections) that I was going to petition to waive my direct appeal and go to the death chamber," Hayes wrote in the September 29 letter, which was excerpted in the newspaper on Thursday.

"I cannot live with the intense tourcher (sic), torment, harassment, and the resulting psychological trauma dished out by the Dept. Of Corr. staff here at Northern," he wrote, referring to Northern Correctional Institution in Somers, Connecticut.

"I was sentenced to death, not sentenced to tourcher (sic) and punitive treatment until death," the letter said.

Connecticut abolished capital punishment in April but legislators designed the law to apply only to future sentences so that Hayes and Komisarjevsky could be executed for the killings that sent shock waves across the state.

Attempts to reach the New Haven State's Attorney Michael Dearington and the office of the Capital Defense Trial Services Unit, which is handling Hayes appeal, as well as New Haven public defender Thomas Ullman, Hayes' lawyer, were unsuccessful.

Just a man doing his job

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100831/ap_on_re_us/us_death_chamber_warden