The state of Arizona is making preparations to execute death row inmates with the same chemical that was used in Auschwitz death chambers.
The state's department of corrections has spent more than $2,000 on the ingredients used to make cyanide gas.
According to documents obtained by The Guardian, a solid brick of potassium cyanide was purchased in December for $1,530, as well as sodium hydroxide pellets and sulphuric acid - all of which combined create the lethal gas.
The gas chamber is said to be the most dangerous and complicated way of execution. It involves the prisoner being strapped to a chair in an airtight chamber, before potassium cyanide pellets are dropped into a bath of sulphuric acid under the chair, creating the gas.
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The Arizona State Prison Complex has a gas chamber that was built in 1949. It wasn't used for 22 years, before being 'refurbished' after the state has decided to restart executions.
They were stopped for seven years after the grim lethal injection of Joseph Wood in 2014, which went horribly wrong.
But the documents reveal that a series of checks have been put into place at ASPC's Florence Complex gas chamber. They included seals on windows and the door checked to make sure they were airtight. Water was first used in the tests instead of any chemicals, while a smoke grenade was used to imitate the gas.
The state also used some shockingly basic tests, including prison officials checking for gas leaks with a candle.
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The two inmates likely to be first to experience the new system, out of 115 on death row are Frank Atwood and Clarence Dixon, both 65.
Atwood was sentenced to death in 1984 for killing an eight-year-old girl called Vicki Lynne Hoskinson. Dixon murdered a Deana Bowdoin, a college student, in 1978.
Atwood's lawyer, Joseph Perkovich, told the publication it is unfair for the state to hurry towards an execution, when the investigation into his client's innocence has been delayed.
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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."
Although the state appears to be pressing ahead with its plans, the use of hydrogen cyanide is widely associated with the Nazis, who used the concoction under the name Zyklon B in extermination camps including Auschwitz.
LADbible has contacted the Arizona Department of Corrections for comment.
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