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An execution chamber, or death chamber, is a room or chamber in which a legal execution is carried out. Execution chambers are almost always inside the walls of a maximum-security prison, although not always at the same prison where the death row population is housed. Inside the chamber is the device used to carry out the death sentence.
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United States
In the United States, an execution chamber will usually contain a lethal injection table. In most cases, a witness room is located adjacent to an execution chamber, where witnesses may watch the execution through glass windows. All except for one of the states which allow capital punishment are equipped with a death chamber, but many states rarely put them to use. The sole exception is New Hampshire, which has not had an inmate on death row since the 1940s. Kansas, Nebraska and California are the only states to have an execution chamber, which is equipped to execute an inmate by lethal injection, which has never been used, while the State of New York had its execution chamber closed under the David Paterson administration, following the 2004 New York Court of Appeals decision in People v. LaValle, which ruled the state's death penalty statute unconstitutional.
Locations of execution chambers in the United States
Notes:
a Death penalty abolished in 2012. All remaining inmates death sentences were commuted to life imprisonment by the Connecticut Supreme Court in 2015.
b Death penalty abolished in 2011. All condemned prisoners sentences were commuted to life imprisonment immediately upon abolition.
c Death penalty abolished in 2013. Remaining inmate's death sentences were commuted to life imprisonment by Gov. Martin O'Malley in 2014.
d Death penalty abolished in 2009; two prisoners remain on death row under sentences of death.
e Last death sentence reversed in 2007.
f Closed in 2008 under David Paterson's administration.
g If an execution does occur, the state will use its parole board meeting room at the state prison.
United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom, the execution chamber was part of a larger complex, often referred to as the "Execution Suite". The room, usually formed from two single prison cells, contained the large trapdoor, usually double-leaved, but in some older chambers such as at Oxford, single-leaved, and operating lever. The wooden beam from which the rope was suspended was usually set into the walls of the chamber above, with the floor removed. At Wandsworth Prison the floor was retained and holes allowed the rope and chains through. Oxford's chamber was of an old 19th-century type, and the beam was set into the walls of the chamber just above head height.
Such rooms were almost always built into one of the wings of a prison; following the recommendation of prison governors during the 1948 Royal Commission on capital punishment, further execution chambers were housed in purpose-built blocks, separate from the main prison. The last gallows to be constructed in Britain, at HMP Aberdeen, was built in 1962, and was used one year later for the hanging of Henry John Burnett, the last person to be executed in Scotland.
The last officially operational gallows in the United Kingdom (as several remained unofficially in other prisons), at Wandsworth Prison, was removed in 1994. Salvaged parts from it are currently in the possession of the National Galleries of Justice, having previously been at the HM Prison Service museum.
Japan
Japan has seven execution chambers used to kill condemned criminals. One is at the Tokyo Detention House. Hanging is Japan's method of execution. The execution chamber in Tokyo has a trap door. As the condemned dies, his or her body falls into a room below the execution chamber, and in that room the death is confirmed. In the Tokyo facility, before the condemned is executed, he or she passes a statue of Amida Nyorai (Amitābha), a Buddhist deity. The execution room in Tokyo is in two sections, with both of them together the size of a 15 tatami mat room (270 square feet or 25 m²).