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March 4, 1999
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FLORENCE, Arizona (CNN) -- A blast of lethal gas in an Arizona gas chamber ended the life of German citizen Walter LaGrand Wednesday.

LaGrand was pronounced dead 18 minutes after cyanide pellets were dropped into a pan of distilled water and sulfuric acid below his seat in the chamber.

As a cloud of mist rose, he began coughing, shook his head and gagged several times. Minutes later, his head slumped forward. He coughed again, raised his head and slumped forward.

Minutes before dying, LaGrand apologized to the families of his victim.

"To all my loved ones, I hope they find peace. To all of you here today, I forgive you and I hope I can be forgiven in my next life," he said.

LaGrand's execution in the gas chamber was a method he chose in the hope of winning a stay on the grounds that it was cruel and unusual punishment

His brother, Karl, was executed last week for the same crime: killing a bank manager during a robbery in 1982.

The case drew widespread attention in Germany, which has no death penalty, prompting repeated diplomatic protests and an appeal to an international court.

The U.S.Supreme Court on Wednesday night lifted a federal appeals court's restraining order barring Arizona from executing LaGrand in the Florence gas chamber and rejected the last two appeals on his behalf.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed to an extent with Walter LaGrand's argument, saying Wednesday afternoon that Arizona could execute him but that it couldn't do so with gas. But the Supreme Court reversed that ruling.

The 9th Circuit issued a stay in a nearly identical appeal made by LaGrand's brother, Karl, last week, but the U.S. Supreme Court overturned it in a matter of hours and he was executed.

Walter LaGrand refused to accept the state's offer to switch to lethal injection earlier this week, saying he would stick with the gas chamber regardless of the outcome.

Arizona Gov. Jane Hull rejected appeals from German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to stay the execution.

The brothers were born in Augsburg, Germany, and moved to southern Arizona as children after their mother married an American serviceman. Karl was the first German citizen executed in the United States since World War II.

Earlier Wednesday, the world court held a 30-minute hearing at which Sri Lankan Judge Christopher Weeramantry, the United Nations court's vice president, urged the United States to use "all the measures at its disposal" to prevent the execution.

It also said the United States should pay unspecified damages for the death of LaGrand's brother, Karl, who was executed last week for his part in the same crime.

The world court, however, has no enforcement powers.

Hull said she was not worried about any fallout to Arizona's image overseas.

She said it is her duty to uphold the laws of her state. And Hull hopes the Germans will respect Arizona's law just as she respects Germany's.

Walter LaGrand, 37, and his brother Karl, 35, were sentenced to die for fatally stabbing bank manager Kenneth Hartsock and injuring a teller during a botched robbery in rural Marana in 1982.

The last Arizona prisoner to die in the gas chamber was Donald Harding in 1992. Harding's death was considered so gruesome - it took him 11 minutes to die -- that Arizona voters voted to require prisoners condemned to die after November 1992 to be executed by injection.

Those sentenced to death before 1992, like the LaGrands, are given a choice. The 9th Circuit Wednesday ordered the state to stop making it an option.

Thirty-eight U.S. states have capital punishment, and five states offer the gas chamber as an optional method of execution, according to Richard Dieter, executive director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center. In addition to Arizona, some inmates in California, Wyoming, Maryland and Missouri can choose the gas chamber.

Only 10 of more than 500 inmates executed since the death penalty was restored in 1976 have been gassed, he said.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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