February 7, 1924 Tested in Nevada hydrogen cyanide to kill G John, a Chinese immigrant convicted of murder; A century later, the United States is experimenting with gas executions again, this time using nitrogen.

Between Gee’s execution in 1924 and Kenneth Eugene Smith in Alabama just two weeks ago, In the United States, approximately 600 prisoners were gassed to death.

Ji, who was 29 years old at the time of his execution, was born in 1895 in the Chinese province of Canton and emigrated to the United States around 1908 to San Francisco, California, along with many of his compatriots.

In San Francisco, he joined the Hip Sing Tong, a criminal gang that trafficked liquor and drugs and disputed control of the territory with the Bing Kong Tong. The man he killed on the night of August 27 in Mina, Nevada, belonged to this rival gang.

Tom Cuong Kee, 74, a laundry owner in Minh, was killed by Gee with a .38-caliber Colt revolver.

Nevada introduced hydrogen cyanide as The method is theoretically more humane than the electric chairwhich in turn made drapery obsolete.

Unlike %C2%A0%C2%BFQui%C3%A9n%20es%20Kenneth%20Smith,%20%20prisoner%20in%20EU%20who%20be%C3%A1%20executed%20with%20gas%20nitr%C3%B3geno ? ” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>new method tried on Smith in Alabama, who was injected with nitrogen through a surgical mask to execute Gee in In 1924, a gas chamber was used, hermetically sealed and filled with hydrogen cyanide.

During the execution, witnesses were evacuated for fear of a gas leak, and prison doctors did not perform an autopsy in case he had released cyanide.

gas chambers became popular in the United States after Gee’s execution, but after World War II its use began to decline, possibly due to its connection to the Holocaust.

There were no executions in the United States between 1967 and 1977, when the legal battle over the death penalty took place. This decade is considered the period before and after the death penalty in this North American country, and the current era is the “modern era”.

In this “modern era” they were 1,583 prisoners executed, the last of them being Smith. From those 1,402 people died by lethal injection -first introduced in 1982 in Texas-, 163 electrocuted and one 12 in the gas chamberin addition to three shot and three hanged.

Texas was not only a pioneer in the use of lethal injection, but also became the state that has killed the most prisoners since 1977, with 586. Oklahoma (123), Virginia (113) and Florida (105) follow closely behind.

The death penalty is still in effect in 27 of the 50 states. countries, but have executed only a dozen in the past decade: Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, Ohio, Missouri, Georgia, Arizona, Alabama, Virginia (now banned), Tennessee, Nebraska, South Dakota and Arkansas.

Also the federal government, which Donald Trump (2017-2021) 13 prisoners were killed in the White House in a year and a half.

Although most cases since 1982 have been lethal injections, Alabama decided to try nitrogen gas asphyxiation given the difficulties that states that still use the death penalty have had in acquiring drugs in recent years.

Pharmaceutical companies, under pressure from activists, refuse to allow their products to be used for these purposes.

Moreover, complications that arose in several executions in which the suffering of the prisoners was obvious led to the method being questioned as inhumane and the subject of legal disputes over the years.

States have been thinking about alternatives to lethal injection for years, and in fact some, like Utah, which hasn’t had the procedure since 2010, have reintroduced the procedure. firing squad as an opportunity.

The execution of Smith, the nitrogen gas guinea pig, has been the focus of these states, who are now considering introducing this method of killing – apparently more humane and without supply problems. In fact, it is approved in Oklahoma and Mississippi.