An American, sentenced to death for killing a young girl nearly 40 years ago, was executed by lethal injection Wednesday in Arizona, which had once offered a gas chamber choice.
• Read also: Arizona executes first inmate sentenced to death since 2014
• Read also: Arizona offers gas chamber to death row inmate
The Arizona Department of Corrections announced in a statement that Frank Atwood, 66, was pronounced dead at 10:16 a.m. (5:16 p.m. GMT) at the Florence State Penitentiary.
In 1984, he kidnapped an 8-year-old girl who was riding a bicycle in Tucson. His body was found seven months later in the desert.
He was sentenced to death in 1987, then filed several judicial appeals without success. His death was also postponed due to the suspension of executions in Arizona in 2014 after the prolonged suffering of a convulsive convict after being given lethal substances.
The sprawling southern US state revived the practice last month when it executed Clarence Dixon, a Native American convicted of killing a student thirty years ago.
To overcome objections to the legality of lethal injections, Arizona is now giving death row inmates the option of inhaling the lethal gas.
Neither Clarence Dixon nor Frank Atwood spoke, which amounts to accepting lethal injection.
But the prospect of returning the gas chamber shocked, especially since prison authorities plan to use hydrogen cyanide, the main ingredient in Zyklon-B gas, associated with the Holocaust.
However, Frank Atwood’s mother was Jewish and fled Austria in 1939 to escape the Nazis, according to the convict’s lawyer, May Jo Berkowitz.
Seven executions have taken place in the United States since the beginning of the year.
