USA - California. The State Senate Public Safety rejected a bill to bring back gas chamber.

The State Senate Public Safety rejected a bill to bring back gas chamber in California. The committee voted 5-2 to defeat SB 779, a measure authored by Senator Joel Anderson (R-Alpine) and sponsored by the California District Attorneys Association. The bill sought to speed up executions in California through several means, including bringing back the gas chamber. The bill sparked strong outcry from human rights activists who denounced the method as inhumane. California voters narrowly defeated a bill in November that would have outlawed the death penalty. The punishment remains on the books, but due to 2 judicial rulings finding prior methods inhumane, the state has been left unable to carry out executions since 2006. In 2006, a judge ruled that lethal injections at San Quentin, carried out by poorly trained staff, posed undue risk of an agonizing death. SB 779 proposed to reinstate the gas chamber but using a "nontoxic gas administered in a lethal manner, such as by displacing oxygen" to suffocate a person to death. In addition to reinstating the gas chamber, Anderson's measure also sought to limit appeals by most condemned prisoners to 1 round in state court and another in federal court. It would have barred disclosure of execution drug suppliers. The bill also sought to shroud the process in secrecy by eliminating public review of execution procedures.