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2 Inmates Suggest Gas Chamber as Possible Execution Method

execution gurney
California Department of Corrections
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Wikimedia Commons

Attorneys for two Missouri death row inmates are suggesting reviving the gas chamber as an alternative method of execution.

The inmates, Russell Bucklew and Ernest L. Johnson, argue in court appeals that medical conditions they suffer from would cause painful reactions to the chemicals used in lethal injections.

The Kansas City Star reports the law requires the men's attorneys to offer an alternative method for execution. Their lawyers have proposed the gas chamber, even though the state no longer has a working gas chamber.

Bucklew's attorney has also raised a possible second alternative — the firing squad.

Bucklew is on death row for the 1996 killing of a man in southeast Missouri. Johnson was sentenced to death for killing three people during a 1994 store robbery in Columbia.

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