Execution by electrocution, usually performed using an electric
chair, is an execution method originating in the United
States in which the condemned person is strapped to a specially built
wooden chair and electrocuted through electrodes
placed on the head and leg. This execution method, conceived in 1881 by a Buffalo,
New York dentist named Alfred P. Southwick, was developed throughout
the 1880s as a humane alternative to hanging and
first used in 1890. This execution method has been used in the United
States and, for a period of several decades, in the Philippines
(its first use there in 1924, last in 1976).
Historically,
once the condemned person was attached to the chair, various
cycles (differing in voltage and duration) of alternating current would be passed through the
individual's body, in order to cause fatal damage to the internal organs
(including the brain). The first more powerful jolt of electric current was
designed to pass through the head and cause immediate unconsciousness and brain
death. The second less powerful jolt was designed to cause fatal damage to
the vital organs. Death may also be caused by electrical overstimulation of the
heart.
Although the electric chair has long been a symbol of the death penalty in the United States, its use is in decline due to the rise of lethal injection, which is widely believed to be a more humane method of execution. Although some states still maintain electrocution as a method of execution, today it is only maintained as a secondary method that may be chosen over lethal injection at the request of the prisoner, except in Tennessee where it may be used if the drugs for lethal injection are not available, without input from the prisoner. As of 2014, electrocution is an optional form of execution in Alabama, Florida, South Carolina and Virginia. They allow the prisoner to choose lethal injection as an alternative method. In the state of Kentucky the electric chair has been retired except for those whose capital crimes were committed prior to March 31, 1998 and who choose electrocution; inmates who do not choose electrocution and inmates who committed their crimes after the designated date are executed by lethal injection. In the state of Tennessee the electric chair is available for use if lethal injection drugs are unavailable, or otherwise if the inmate so chooses if their capital crime was committed before 1999. The electric chair is an alternate form of execution approved for potential use in Arkansas and Oklahoma if other forms of execution are found unconstitutional in the state at the time of execution. On February 8, 2008, the Nebraska Supreme Court determined that execution by electric chair was a "cruel and unusual punishment" under the state's constitution. This brought executions of this type to an end in Nebraska, the only remaining state to retain electrocution as its sole method of execution.
Although the electric chair has long been a symbol of the death penalty in the United States, its use is in decline due to the rise of lethal injection, which is widely believed to be a more humane method of execution. Although some states still maintain electrocution as a method of execution, today it is only maintained as a secondary method that may be chosen over lethal injection at the request of the prisoner, except in Tennessee where it may be used if the drugs for lethal injection are not available, without input from the prisoner. As of 2014, electrocution is an optional form of execution in Alabama, Florida, South Carolina and Virginia. They allow the prisoner to choose lethal injection as an alternative method. In the state of Kentucky the electric chair has been retired except for those whose capital crimes were committed prior to March 31, 1998 and who choose electrocution; inmates who do not choose electrocution and inmates who committed their crimes after the designated date are executed by lethal injection. In the state of Tennessee the electric chair is available for use if lethal injection drugs are unavailable, or otherwise if the inmate so chooses if their capital crime was committed before 1999. The electric chair is an alternate form of execution approved for potential use in Arkansas and Oklahoma if other forms of execution are found unconstitutional in the state at the time of execution. On February 8, 2008, the Nebraska Supreme Court determined that execution by electric chair was a "cruel and unusual punishment" under the state's constitution. This brought executions of this type to an end in Nebraska, the only remaining state to retain electrocution as its sole method of execution.
Invention
The
late 1870s/early 1880s spread of arc lighting
(a type of brilliant outdoor street lighting that required high voltages in the
range of 3000–6000 volts) was followed by one story after another in newspapers
about how the high voltages used were killing people, usually unwary linemen, a
strange new phenomenon that seemed to instantaneously strike a victim dead
without leaving a mark. One of these accidents, in Buffalo, New York on August
7, 1881, led to the inception of the electric chair. That evening a drunken
dock worker, looking for the thrill of a tingling sensation he had noticed
before, managed to sneak his way into a Brush Electric Company arc lighting power
house and grabbed the brush and ground of a large electric dynamo. He died
instantly. The coroner who investigated the case brought it up at a local
Buffalo scientific society. Another member, a dentist named Alfred P. Southwick who had a technical
background, thought some application could be found for the curious phenomenon.
Southwick,
local physician George E. Fell, and the head of the Buffalo ASPCA
performed a whole series of experiments electrocuting hundreds of stray dogs,
experimenting with animals in water, out of water, electrode types and
placement, and conduction material until they came up with a repeatable method to
euthanize animals via electricity. Southwick went on in the early 1880s to
advocate that this method be used as a more humane replacement for hanging in
capital cases, coming to national attention when he published his ideas in
scientific journals in 1882 and 1883. He worked out calculations based on the
dog experiments, trying to develop a scaled-up method that would work on
humans. Early on in his designs he adopted a modified version of the dental
chair as a way to restrain the condemned, a device that from then on would be
referred to as the electric chair.
The
Gerry commission
After
a series of botched hangings in the US there was mounting criticism of this
form of capital punishment and the death penalty in general. In 1886 newly
elected New York State governor David
B. Hill set up a three-member death penalty commission, which was chaired
by the human rights advocate and reformer Elbridge Thomas Gerry and included New York
lawyer and politician Matthew Hale and Southwick, to investigate
a more humane means of execution.
The
commission members surveyed the history of execution and sent out a fact-finding
questionnaire to government officials, lawyers, and medical experts all around
the state asking for their opinion. The questionnaires were a bit skewed
because they pushed forward electrocution and did not include the choice of
abolishing the death penalty but, despite that, a slight majority of respondents
recommended hanging over electrocution and a few recommended the abolition of
capital punishment. The commission also contacted electrical experts including Thomson-Houston Electric Company's
Elihu
Thomson (who recommended high voltage AC connected to the head and the
spine) and the inventor Thomas Edison (who also recommended AC, as well as
using a Westinghouse generator). They also
attended electrocutions of dogs by Dr. George Fell who had worked with
Southwick's in the early 1880s experiments. Fell was conducting further
experiments, electrocuting anesthetized dissected dogs trying to discern
exactly how electricity killed a subject.
In
1888, the Commission recommended electrocution using a Southwick's electric
chair idea with metal conductors attached to the condemned person's head and
feet. They further recommended that executions be handled by the state instead
of the individual counties with three electric chairs set up at Auburn, Clinton, and Sing-Sing
prisons. A bill following these recommendations passed the legislature and was
signed by Governor Hill on June 4, 1888, set to go into effect on January 1,
1889.
The
Medico-Legal commission
The
bill itself contained no details on the type or amount of electricity that
should be used and the New York Medico-Legal Society, an informal society
composed of doctors and lawyers, was given the task of determining these
factors. In September 1888 a committee was formed and recommended 3000 volts
although the type of electricity, direct
current or alternating current, was not determined and
since tests up to that point had been done on animals smaller than a human
(dogs) some members were unsure that the lethality of AC had been conclusively
proven.
At
this point the state's efforts to design the electric chair became intermixed
with what has become to be known as the War
of Currents, a competition between Thomas
Edison's direct current power system and George Westinghouse's alternating current based
system. The two companies had been competing commercially since 1886 and a
series of events had turned it into an all out media war in 1888. The committee
head, neurologist
Frederick Peterson, enlisted the services of Harold
P. Brown as a consultant. Brown had been on his own crusade against
alternating current after the shoddy installation of pole mounted AC arc
lighting lines in New York City had caused several deaths in the spring of
1888. Peterson had been an assistant at Brown's July 1888 public electrocution
of dogs with AC at Columbia College, an attempt by Brown to prove AC was more
deadly than DC. Technical assistance in these demonstrations was provided by
Thomas Edison's West Orange laboratory and there grew to be some form of collusion
between Edison Electric and Brown. Back at West Orange on December 5, 1888
Brown set up an experiment with members of the press, members of the
Medico-Legal Society including Elbridge Gerry who was also chairman of the
death penalty commission, and Thomas Edison looking on. Brown used alternating
current for all of his tests on animals larger than a human, including 4 calves
and a lame horse, all dispatched with 750 volts of AC. Based on these results
the Medico-Legal Society recommended the use of 1000-1500 volts of alternating
current for executions and newspapers noted the AC used was half the voltage
used in the power lines over the streets of American cities. Westinghouse
criticized these test as a skewed self-serving demonstration designed to be a direct
attack on alternating current and accused Brown of being in the employ of
Edison.
At
the request of death penalty commission chairman Gerry, Medico-Legal Society
members; electrotherapy expert Alphonse David Rockwell, Dr. Carlos Frederick MacDonald, and Columbia
College professor Dr Louis H. Laudy, were given the task of working out the
details of electrode placement. They again turned to Brown to supply the
technical assistance. Brown asked Edison Electric Light to supply equipment for
the tests and treasurer Francis S. Hastings (who seemed to be one of the
primary movers at the company trying to portray Westinghouse as a peddler of
death dealing AC current) tried to obtain a Westinghouse AC generator for the
test but found none was to be had. They ended up using Edison's West Orange
laboratory for the animal tests they conducted in mid-March 1889.
Superintendent of Prisons Austin Lathrop asked Brown to design the chair but
Brown turned down the offer. Dr. George
Fell drew up the final designs for a simple oak chair and went against the
Medico-Legal Society recommendations, changing the position of the electrodes
to the head and the middle of the back. Brown did take on the job of finding
the generators needed to power the chair. He managed to surreptitiously acquire
three Westinghouse AC generators that were being decommissioned with the help
of Edison and Westinghouse's chief AC rival, the Thomson-Houston Electric Company,
a move that made sure that Westinghouse's equipment would be associated with
the first execution. The electric chair was built by Edwin
F. Davis, the first "state
electrician" (executioner) for the State of New York.
The execution of William Kemmler, August 6, 1890 |
First
execution
The
first person in line to die under New York's new electrocution law was Joseph
Chappleau, convicted for beating his neighbor to death with a sled stake, but
his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. The next person scheduled to be
executed was William Kemmler, convicted of
murdering his wife with a hatchet. An appeal on Kemmler's behalf was made to
the New York Court of Appeals on the grounds
that use of electricity as a means of execution constituted a cruel and unusual punishment and was
thus contrary to the constitutions of the United States and the state of New
York. On December 30, 1889, the writ of habeas corpus sworn out on Kemmler's
behalf was denied by the court, with Judge Dwight writing in a lengthy ruling:
We have no doubt that if the Legislature of this State should undertake to proscribe for any offense against its laws the punishment of burning at the stake, breaking at the wheel, etc., it would be the duty of the courts to pronounce upon such attempt the condemnation of the Constitution. The question now to be answered is whether the legislative act here assailed is subject to the same condemnation. Certainly it is not so on its face, for, although the mode of death described is conceded to be unusual, there is no common knowledge or consent that it is cruel; it is a question of fact whether an electric current of sufficient intensity and skillfully applied will produce death without unnecessary suffering.
Kemmler
was executed in New York's Auburn Prison on August 6, 1890; the "state
electrician" was Edwin F. Davis. The first 17-second passage of
current through Kemmler caused unconsciousness, but failed to stop his heart
and breathing. The attending physicians, Edward Charles Spitzka and Carlos F.
MacDonald, came forward to examine Kemmler. After confirming Kemmler was still
alive, Spitzka reportedly called out, "Have the current turned on again,
quick, no delay." The generator needed time to re-charge, however. In the
second attempt, Kemmler was shocked with 2,000 volts. Blood vessels under the
skin ruptured and bled, and the areas around the electrodes singed. The entire
execution took about eight minutes. George Westinghouse later commented that
"they would have done better using an axe," and a witnessing reporter
claimed that it was "an awful spectacle, far worse than hanging."
Adoption
The
electric chair was adopted by Ohio (1897), Massachusetts (1900), New Jersey
(1906) and Virginia (1908), and soon became the prevalent method of execution
in the United States, replacing hanging. Most of the states that currently use or have used
the electric chair lie east of the Mississippi
River. The electric chair remained the most prominent execution method
until the mid-1980s when lethal injection
became widely accepted for conducting judicial executions.
Other
countries appear to have contemplated using the method, sometimes for special
reasons.
Winston Churchill tried to execute Adolf
Hitler? The intention of the British Prime Minister was to use the electric
chair for the first time to execute him. (Photo: Telemundo.com)
|
United
Kingdom
Minutes
of the British War Cabinet released in 2006 show that in December 1942, Winston
Churchill mused that Adolf Hitler might be executed in Trafalgar Square using an electric chair borrowed
from the United States. 'This man is the mainspring of evil. Instrument - electric chair, for gangsters no doubt available
on Lease
Lend.'
The
United Kingdom also considered whether to replace hanging with the electric
chair (as well as considering the gas chamber and lethal injection) during the
Royal Commission on Capital Punishment, the findings of which were published in
1953. The Commission concluded that the electric chair had no particular
advantages over hanging, and so the electric chair was not adopted for use in
the United Kingdom.
Current
use
A
number of states still allow the condemned person to choose between
electrocution and lethal injection. In all, twelve inmates nationwide—seven in Virginia,
three in South Carolina and one each in Arkansas and Tennessee—have
opted for electrocution over lethal injection. The last use of the chair was on
January 16, 2013, when Robert Gleason, Jr. decided to go to the electric chair
in Virginia.
After
1966, electrocutions ceased for a time in the US, but the method continued in
the Philippines.
A well-publicized triple execution took place in May 1972, when Jaime Jose,
Basilio Pineda and Edgardo Aquino were electrocuted for the 1967 abduction and
gang-rape of the young actress Maggie
de la Riva.
Original Death Chamber at the Red Hat Cell
Block. The chair is a replica of the original. The Red Hat was closed in the
early 1970s.
|
Notable
persons and events in the United States
Serial killer Lizzie Halliday was the first woman
sentenced to die in the electric chair, in 1894, but governor Roswell P. Flower commuted her sentence to
life in a mental institution after a medical commission declared her insane. A
second woman sentenced to death in 1895, Maria Barbella, was acquitted the next
year. Martha M. Place
became the first woman to receive the deadly current in the electric chair at Sing Sing
Prison on March 20, 1899, for the murder of her 17-year-old stepdaughter, Ida
Place.
In
a botched electrocution at Sing Sing in 1903, Fred Van Wormer was electrocuted
and pronounced dead. But, upon arrival in the autopsy room he was seen to be breathing
once again. The executioner had gone home, but was called back to
re-electrocute Wormer. Before the executioner returned, Wormer died.
Nonetheless, Wormer's corpse was set into the chair again and subjected to 1700
volts for thirty seconds.
The
electrocution of housewife Ruth Snyder at
Sing Sing on the evening of January 12, 1928, for the March 1927 murder of her
husband was made famous when news photographer Tom Howard,
working for the New York Daily
News, smuggled a hidden camera into the death chamber and
photographed her in the electric chair as the current was turned on. The
photograph was a front-page sensation the following morning, and remains one of
the most famous photojournalism
photographs of all time.
A
record was set on July 13, 1928, when seven men were executed consecutively in
the electric chair at the Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville.
On
August 8, 1942, six German agents convicted of espionage and attempted sabotage in the Quirin case for their role in Operation Pastorius
during World War II were executed by electric
chair at the District of
Columbia jail.
James French
was executed on August 10, 1966, the last person electrocuted until 1979.
French was the first person executed in Oklahoma since Richard Dare was
electrocuted June 1, 1963 and the only person executed in 1966.
On
May 25, 1979, John Spenkelink
became the first electrocuted person after the Gregg v. Georgia decision by the Supreme
Court of the United States in 1976. He was the first person to be
executed in the United States in this manner since 1966.
The
last person to be executed by electric chair without the choice of an
alternative method was Lynda Lyon Block on
May 10, 2002 in Alabama.
Probably the most famous american electric chair - Old Sparky from Sing-Sing prison |
Decline
The
use of the electric chair has declined as legislators sought what they believed
to be more humane methods of execution. Lethal injection became the most widely
used method, aided by media reports of botched electrocutions in the early
1980s.
The
electric chair has been criticized because of several instances in which the
subjects were killed only after being subjected to multiple electric shocks.
This led to a call for ending of the practice because many see it as cruel and unusual punishment. Trying
to address such concerns, Nebraska introduced a new electrocution protocol in
2004, which called for administration of a 15-second-long application of 2,450
volts of electricity; after a 15-minute wait, an official then checks for signs
of life. New concerns raised regarding the 2004 protocol resulted, in April
2007, in the ushering in of the current Nebraska protocol, calling for a
20-second-long application of 2,450 volts of electricity. (Prior to the 2004
protocol change, an initial eight-second application of 2,450 volts was
administered, followed by a one-second pause, then a 22-second application at
480 volts. After a 20-second break, the cycle was repeated three more times.)
In
1946, the electric chair failed to kill Willie
Francis, who reportedly shrieked "take it off! Let me breathe!"
after the current was applied. It turned out that the portable electric chair
had been improperly set up by an intoxicated trustee. A case was brought before
the U.S. Supreme Court (Francis v. Resweber), with lawyers for the
condemned arguing that although Francis did not die, he had, in fact, been executed.
The argument was rejected on the basis that re-execution did not violate the double
jeopardy clause of the 5th Amendment of the US Constitution, and Francis
was returned to the electric chair and successfully executed in 1947.
Recorded
incidents of botched electrocutions were prevalent after the national
moratorium ended January 17, 1977; two in Alabama, three
in Florida,
one in Georgia, one in Indiana and
three in Virginia.
All five states now have lethal injection as the default method if a choice is
not made.
As
of 2015, the only places in the world which still reserve the electric chair as
an option for execution are the U.S. states of Alabama, Florida, South
Carolina, Kentucky,
Tennessee
and Virginia.
(Arkansas
and Oklahoma
laws provide for its use should lethal injection ever be held to be
unconstitutional.) Inmates in the other states must select either it or lethal
injection. In Kentucky,
only inmates sentenced before a certain date can choose to be executed by
electric chair. Tennessee was among the states that provided inmates with a
choice of the electric chair or lethal injection; however, in May 2014, the
state passed a law allowing the use of the electric chair if lethal injection
drugs were unavailable or made unconstitutional. In the state of Florida, on
July 8, 1999, Allen Lee Davis convicted of murder was executed in
the Florida electric chair "Old Sparky".
Davis' face was bloodied and photographs taken, which were later posted on the
Internet. The 1997 execution of Pedro
Medina in Florida created controversy when flames burst from the inmate's
head. Lethal injection has been the primary method of execution in the state of
Florida since 2000. On February 15, 2008, the Nebraska Supreme Court declared
execution by electrocution to be "cruel and unusual punishment"
prohibited by the Nebraska Constitution.
Robert Gleason,
executed in the electric chair at Greensville Correctional Center, Virginia on
January 16, 2013, is the most recent individual to choose electrocution over
lethal injection.
Electric Chair |
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