Arizona refurbishes gas chamber in push to resume executions

PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona has refurbished its gas chamber at a prison where the last lethal-gas execution in the United States was carried out in 1999. The refurbishment late last year was made as Arizona tries to resume executions after a nearly seven-year hiatus. It purchased materials to make hydrogen cyanide, the gas used in executions in the U.S. and by the Nazis to kill 865,000 Jews at the Auschwitz concentration camp alone. The horrific nature of gas-chamber deaths and the advent of lethal-injection executions turned the United States against lethal gas.