Gas Chamber

John Frederick Thanos, who could be executed as early as next month, is almost certain to have a choice as to how he will die.The Maryland Senate gave final legislative approval yesterday to a bill switching the state's method of execution from the gas chamber to lethal injection. The governor, who sponsored the measure, is expected to sign it into law as soon as next week.Under the bill, Thanos and the other dozen or so inmates on Maryland's death row could choose between the two methods.

Against small but spirited opposition from death penalty foes, the Maryland Senate overwhelmingly agreed yesterday to switch the state's method of execution from the gas chamber to lethal injection.The bill passed 38 to 7, with two abstentions, despite a vigorous rear guard action by a handful of senators opposed to capital punishment in any form.The measure, part of Gov. William Donald Schaefer's legislative package, now goes to the House of Delegates, where passage is less certain. The Senate approved a similar bill last year, but it failed in the House Judiciary Committee.

A federal judge yesterday ruled that the execution of John Frederick Thanos may be videotaped and his brain waves monitored as possible evidence to determine if death by lethal gas is cruel and unusual punishment.U.S. District Judge Marvin J. Garbis said the constitutionality of the gas chamber is a "serious question" that should be decided on "the best possible evidence." He agreed with attorneys for another death row inmate that a videotape of Thanos' death could be critical evidence and must be preserved.

A study of Maryland's capital punishment laws released yesterday recommends a shorter, less costly appeals process and a switch to execution by lethal injection instead of the gas chamber.A seven-member commission that spent the last 11 months studying Maryland's death penalty gave its 250-page report to Gov. William Donald Schaefer yesterday.The panel found the average death penalty case costs Maryland taxpayers $300,000 to $400,000. The state has spent roughly $12 million on death penalty cases since 1978, even though no one has been executed in the state since 1961.

A death row inmate who is second in line for execution after John Thanos is asking a federal court for the right to videotape Thanos' execution and to have Thanos undergo a medical test as he dies in Maryland's gas chamber.Thanos has agreed to both requests, which are part of inmate Donald Thomas' effort to prove that the gas chamber constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Thomas took his case to federal court after a Baltimore County judge dismissed in October his challenge to the constitutionality of the gas chamber.

A death row inmate who is second in line for execution after John Thanos is asking a federal court for the right to videotape Thanos' execution and to have Thanos undergo a medical test as he dies in Maryland's gas chamber.Thanos has agreed to both requests, which are part of inmate Donald Thomas' effort to prove that the gas chamber constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Thomas took his case to federal court after a Baltimore County judge dismissed in October his challenge to the constitutionality of the gas chamber.

Society must protect itself from destroyerThose who would rescue John Thanos from Maryland's gas chamber for fear of abdicating the moral high ground or practicing bad penology simply miss the point.Thanos' condemnation is neither a reflexive act of blood revenge nor a measure aimed at deterring other sociopaths from committing heinous crimes.Rather, the sentence represents a rational, singular act of societal self-defense, a "necessary evil" enforced as a last resort against a remorseless individual who enjoys murder and promises to murder again.

Maryland's highest court said in a 4-3 ruling yesterday that John Frederick Thanos cannot waive an automatic, 240-day stay of his execution, thereby delaying his death in the gas chamber until at least March 3.The Court of Appeals agreed with arguments by the American Civil Liberties Union that the state's automatic stay is mandatory and not a right a prisoner can waive.However, by a similar margin, the judges ruled that Thanos, 44, the confessed killer of three teen-agers during a weeklong 1990 crime spree, was competent to fire his public defenders and waive future appeals.

IF AND WHEN John Thanos dies in the gas chamber of the Maryland Penitentiary, A. Bennett Brown, wherever he is, may smile. Forty years ago, Brown was a draftsman with the architectural firm that designed the new prison hospital and death house section, where Thanos will die if efforts to save his life fail.It was May 1956. In a photograph that appeared in this newspaper, Brown, who looked like 1993's John Waters, was shown strapped in the chair at the chamber. The unit had just arrived from the manufacturer in Denver.

To a condemned man it cannot make any great difference whether he is gassed or shot, hanged or electrocuted. The end is the same. But it does make a difference to the persons called upon to carry out a public execution. They want, for their own sakes, to get the work done in the quickest, surest, least unpleasant way possible. That, we believe, is why Warden Vernon L. Peppersack, of the Maryland Penitentiary, told legislators at Annapolis yesterday he preferred gas to hanging in the "miserable job" of putting men to death.