Say NO to Nitrogen Gas Suffocation/Gas Chamber!

Allegro Industries, Onyx, Walter Surface Technologies, Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, and Ohio Legislators & Governors, (and others TBD, as-needed)

* The first experimental use of nitrogen hypoxia to execute a prisoner took place January 25, 2024 in Alabama.

* Alabama carried out its 4th gas suffocation execution on February 6, 2025.

* Louisiana announced on Feb 10, 2025 that it will soon begin gas suffocation executions when it resumes executions for the first time since 2010.

* Allegro Industries and its parent companies have refused to disavow the use of their life-saving respirator mask for the purpose of killing prisoners. Stop profiting from executions!

* Legislators in Kansas, Nebraska and Ohio rejected the idea in 2024, while legislators in Louisiana allowed gas suffocation executions as a back-up method. We are monitoring new legislation and could see renewed attempts to add this method in Arkansas, Kansas, Nebraska, Ohio and elsewhere.

Sign the petition to say NO to smothering prisoners with gas.

[See operative petition language below the following background. If you are a Jewish clergy person, community leader, or member of a Jewish community, please sign this petition and also, click here.]

Alabama conducted the first experimental nitrogen gas execution on January 25, 2024, inflicting "nitrogen asphyxia" via a sealed face mask that the prisoner was forced to wear. The first-ever execution using nitrogen asphyxia was a "textbook" success according to Alabama prison officials, who suggested other states should give it a try, and they would help. Non-government witnesses described a horrific ad torturous experience that should be found unconstitutional.

Additional updates will be forthcoming:

Alabama's gas suffocation (AKA "nitrogen hypoxia") execution method is an experimental extension of the concept of the "gas chamber," a method of killing which smothers a prisoner by replacing oxygen with nitrogen gas. Alabama's protocol for carrying out an execution using nitrogen hypoxia was released with extensive redactions. This Nov 6, 2023 article spells out the current issues.

Read more about the Worth Rises-led campaign to urge corporations whose life-saving equipment is being used to kill prisoners.
Read more about Kenneth Smith, the first subject of the nitrogen hypoxia experiment, here.
Read more about the lack of transparency in Alabama executions, here.
What could go wrong? This Marshall Project article spells it out...

Arizona refurbished its gas chamber in 2021 and is prepared to use cyanide gas to execute any current death row prisoner who was sentenced to be executed prior to November, 1992. Arizona resumed executions earlier this year.

Read more about this issue in The Guardian via Death Penalty News, or in Cantor Mike Zoosman's blog in The Times of Israel here and more recently, here.
Read Arizona's step by step execution protocol here.
Read the declarations of three witnesses to the lethal gas execution of Don Harding in 1992. (Warning - explicit descriptions of torturous killing.)

ALSO: The most recent prisoner to experience this experimentation was Demetrius Frazier in Alabama on February 6, 2025.

Members of the Jewish community who indicate so when they sign on to this petition are also adding their name to the following stand-alone statement:

JEWISH COMMUNITY STATEMENT OPPOSING THE GAS CHAMBER

Jewish tradition presents somewhat contradictory statements regarding the death penalty. While the Torah permits the death penalty, the Talmud, in Tractate Sanhedrin, imposes severe limits on capital punishment even where the crime is murder. Contemporary US laws do not meet the standards for fairness and accuracy as articulated in Jewish law. Today we are writing not about the death penalty as a whole, but about proposed forms of execution.

Certainly there are members of Jewish communities in states using the gas chamber who support the death penalty in concept or in practice. However, we stand united in opposition to the introduction of the gas chamber as a form of execution. We do not suggest comparisons to the atrocities of Nazi Germany under which millions of our relatives were murdered, many by suffocation in sealed chambers. Still, we cannot imagine it possible that Jewish communities anywhere could stand by while prisoners are executed by the state in our names, using any variation of that mechanism.

Therefore, the undersigned Rabbis, Cantors and other leaders the Jewish community call on you to reject the conduct of executions by suffocation in any sort of gas chamber anywhere in the United States.

Additional Background:

Alabama has never used a gas chamber, but began experimenting with the method using a mask over the prisoner's face on January 25, 2024.

Executions in Arizona were generally carried out by hanging until 1934, when the first execution by gas chamber was carried out in Arizona. In 1992, after the Donald Harding execution, Arizona voters amended the constitution to have lethal injection as the method of execution, but for crimes committed before November, 1992, the prisoner could pick gas. In 1999 when Walter LaGrand, a German National, picked gas and challenged it, the US Supreme Court held that if a prisoner picks gas, he or she cannot challenge that method as to its constitutionality. Walter LaGrand was gassed despite protests by the German government.

NOTE: This petition may be edited for clarity or to add additional information.

Sponsored by

Death Penalty Action

To: Allegro Industries, Onyx, Walter Surface Technologies, Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, and Ohio Legislators & Governors, (and others TBD, as-needed)
From: [Your Name]

[Delivery language to be adjusted according to the target of delivery.]

[For Allegro Industries & parent corporation Walter Surface Technologies, We urge you to disavow the use of your normally life-saving respirator mask for the purpose of killing prisoners.]

[For Alabama] We understand that in Alabama, the experimental nitrogen hypoxia gas chamber/execution protocol has may soon be used again. We call for a halt to all executions, particularly those by suffocation.

* USA Today: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2024/02/19/alabama-execution-nitrogen-gas-witness-cruel-torture/72616304007/

* Associated Press: https://apnews.com/article/nitrogen-execution-alabama-inmate-lawsuit-7043bff9563f99d083b189ff7d39253c

Even the victim family members who witnessed in support of the execution were disturbed, as noted in this New York Times article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/01/us/alabama-nitrogen-execution-kenneth-smith-witnesses.html

[Members of the Jewish community who indicate so when they sign on are also adding their name to the following stand-alone statement]

STATEMENT OPPOSING THE GAS CHAMBER

Jewish tradition presents somewhat contradictory statements regarding the death penalty. While the Torah permits the death penalty, the Talmud, in Tractate Sanhedrin, imposes severe limits on capital punishment even where the crime is murder. Contemporary US law does not meet the standards for fairness and accuracy as articulated in Jewish law. Today we are writing not about the death penalty as a whole, but about proposed forms of execution.

Certainly there are members of Jewish communities who support the death penalty in concept or in practice. However, we stand united in opposition to the introduction of the gas chamber as a form of execution. We do not suggest comparisons to the atrocities of Nazi Germany under which millions of our relatives were murdered, many by suffocation in sealed chambers. Still, we cannot imagine it possible that Jewish communities anywhere could stand by while prisoners are executed by the state in our names, using any variation of that mechanism.

Therefore, the undersigned Rabbis, Cantors and other leaders and members of the Jewish community call on you to reject the conduct of executions by suffocation using a mask or in any sort of gas chamber in your state.