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Lethal Injection Chamber, San Quentin State Prison, California, United States
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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.
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, who has not had an inmate on death row since the 1940s. Kansas is the only state 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.
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