Gas Chamber Debuts: Nevada Pioneers Execution Method

Nevada executed Gee Jon on February 8, 1924, using lethal gas for the first time in American history. The original plan was to pump cyanide gas into Jon’s prison cell while he slept, avoiding the spectacle of a visible execution. When tests showed the gas leaked through the cell walls and endangered guards, the state hastily constructed a small airtight chamber in the prison butcher shop at Carson City. Jon was strapped into a chair, and hydrocyanic acid gas was pumped in through a pipe. He lost consciousness in approximately six minutes. Jon, a Chinese immigrant, had been convicted of killing a rival tong member named Tom Quong Kee in a gang dispute in Mingo, Nevada. His trial and sentencing attracted minimal attention. Nevada had adopted lethal gas as an execution method in 1921, the first state to do so, after lobbying by a military toxicologist named Allen McLean Hamilton who argued it was more humane than hanging, electrocution, or firing squads. The legislation framed the gas chamber as a progressive reform. The chamber itself was crude by later standards. It measured roughly eight by ten feet, with a metal chair bolted to the floor and a window for witnesses. A mixture of sulfuric acid and water sat in a container beneath the chair. Sodium cyanide pellets were dropped into the solution by a lever operated from outside, releasing hydrogen cyanide gas. The process was supposed to cause rapid unconsciousness followed by death within minutes. In practice, witnesses to early gas chamber executions reported prolonged convulsions, gasping, and visible distress lasting up to fifteen minutes. Ten other states eventually adopted the gas chamber, and it became one of the standard methods of execution in America through the mid-twentieth century. California used it extensively, executing 196 people at San Quentin between 1938 and 1996. The method fell out of favor as lethal injection gained acceptance in the 1980s, and multiple courts ruled that the prolonged suffering caused by gas inhalation constituted cruel and unusual punishment. The technology that Nevada introduced as humane modernization became an enduring symbol of the opposite.