For the weapon of the fortnight, I will post
about the electric chair (from Wikipedia) and I will post another blog post
that there is evidence that the electric chair is a more effective weapon in
fighting crime than the lethal injection.
I understand that
there were some botched executions with the electric chair but I will never buy
those arguments from the abolitionists that it is cruel and unusual, rather
than complain so much, fix the problem with the equipment. As Adam Smith once
said, “Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.”
Lord Chief Justice Rayner Goddard, Immanuel Kant, Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Alex Kozinski, Chalerm Ubumrung, Lech Aleksander Kaczyński, Lynne Abraham, and Joseph de Maistre will definitely approve of the use of the
electric chair for sure.
I personally believe
that the USA should abandon the lethal injection and bring back the firing squad, gallows or hire a Saudi Executioner. At the end of the article, there
are several videos to demonstrate how the chair was used.
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 body. This execution method was created by employees of Thomas Edison, and has been used only in the United States and, for a period of several decades, in the Philippines (its first use there in 1924 under American occupation, 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 jolt of electric current was designed to cause
immediate unconsciousness and brain death; the second one was designed to cause fatal
damage to the vital organs. Death was frequently caused by electrical
overstimulation of the heart.
Although
in the United States the electric chair has become a symbol of the death
penalty, 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. As of 2010, 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 states of Kentucky and Tennessee,
the electric chair has been retired except for those whose capital crimes were
committed prior to legislated dates in 1998 (Kentucky: March 31, 1998;
Tennessee: December 31, 1998) and who chose electrocution. In both states,
inmates who do not choose electrocution or inmates who committed their crimes
after the designated date are killed by lethal
injection. 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. It is the sole method
of execution in Vermont, where treason is the only capital crime. 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 for murder.
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Old
Sparky, the electric chair used at Sing Sing prison
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History:
Early development
In
1881, the state of New York established
a committee to determine a new, more humane method of execution to replace hanging. Alfred P. Southwick,
a member of the committee, developed the idea of running electric current
through a condemned man after hearing a case of how relatively painlessly and
quickly a drunk man died due to touching exposed power lines. As Southwick was
a dentist accustomed to performing procedures on subjects in chairs, his
electrical device appeared in the form of a chair to restrain the inmate while
being electrocuted.
The
first electric chair was produced by Harold P. Brown and Arthur Kennelly. Brown worked as an
employee of Thomas Edison,
hired for the purpose of researching electrocution and developing the electric
chair. Kennelly, Edison's chief engineer at the West Orange facility was
assigned to work with Brown on the project. Since Brown and Kennelly worked for
Edison and Edison promoted their work, the development of the electric chair is
often erroneously credited to Edison himself.
Brown
intended to use alternating current
(AC), then emerging as a potent rival to direct current (DC), which was further
along in commercial development. The decision to use AC was partly driven by
Edison's claim that AC was more lethal than DC.
To
prove the danger of AC electricity and its suitability for executions, Brown
and Edison publicly killed many animals with AC for the press in hopes of
associating alternating current with electrical death in the midst of the current wars with George Westinghouse.
It was at these events that the term "electrocution" was coined. The
term "electrocution" originally referred only to electrical execution
(from which it is a portmanteau word),
and not to accidental electrical deaths. However, since no English word was
available for the latter process, the word "electrocution" eventually
took over as a description of all circumstances of electrical death with the
new rise of commercial electricity. Most of their experiments were conducted at
Edison's West Orange, New
Jersey, laboratory in 1888. The demonstrations of electrocution
apparently had their intended effects, and the committee adopted the AC
electric chair in 1889.
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The former State of Louisiana execution
chamber at the Red Hat Cell Block in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, West
Feliciana Parish. The electric chair is a replica of the original.
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First executions
The first person to be executed by the
electric chair was William Kemmler
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 Charles 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."
The first woman to be executed in the
electric chair was Martha M. Place,
executed at Sing Sing
Prison on March 20, 1899.
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 as
an easier and more humane method for conducting judicial executions.
Other
countries appear to have contemplated using the method, sometimes for special
reasons. Minutes of the British War Cabinet released in 2006 show that in
December 1942, Winston Churchill
proposed that Adolf Hitler —
if caught — should be summarily executed in an electric chair, obtained from
the USA. 'This man is the mainspring of evil. Instrument — electric chair, for gangsters, no doubt available on lease-lend'.
A
number of states still allow the condemned person to choose between
electrocution and lethal injection. In all, twelve inmates nationwide — six in Virginia, three in South Carolina and one in Arkansas and Tennessee — have opted for electrocution
over lethal injection. The last use of the chair was on March 18, 2010, when Paul Warner Powell
was electrocuted in Virginia. He elected this method.
After
1966, electrocutions ceased for a time in the USA, 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.
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'Old
Sparky' is the electric chair that Nebraska used for executions. It is housed
in the Nebraska State Penitentiary in Lincoln, Nebraska.
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Notable persons and events
Notable
deaths by electric chair include: George Stinney, Leon Czolgosz, Bruno Hauptmann, Hans B. Schmidt, Harry Pierpont, Giuseppe Zangara, Sacco and Vanzetti,
Julius and
Ethel Rosenberg, Lepke Buchalter, Anna Marie Hahn, Donald Henry
Gaskins, Albert Fish, Charles
Starkweather, Gerald Stano and
Ted Bundy. There was a botched
electrocution at Sing Sing in 1903: Fred Van Wormer was electrocuted and pronounced
dead, but upon arrival to the autopsy room, Wormer began breathing once again.
The executioner, who had gone home, was called back to re-electrocute Wormer;
upon his return, Wormer had officially died. Nonetheless, Wormer's corpse was
set into the chair again and electrocuted with 1700 volts for thirty seconds.
Maria Barbella was the first woman
sentenced to death by the electric chair; however, she was released on
appeal.
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 newspaper 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. In 1942,
six Germans convicted of espionage in the Quirin case were killed in one day in the District of
Columbia jail electric chair.
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 Arthur
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. However, the last
person to be executed via the electric chair without the choice of an
alternative method was Lynda Lyon Block
on May 10, 2002 in Alabama.
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 popular
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.)
There have been
incidents of a person's head on fire;
or of a burnt electrical transformer. In
1946, the electric chair failed to execute Willie Francis, who reportedly shrieked
"take it off! Let me breathe!" as he was being executed. 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 2008, 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 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 2008. On February 15, 2008, the Nebraska Supreme Court declared execution
by electrocution to be "cruel and unusual punishment" prohibited by
the Nebraska Constitution.
Although the use
of electrocution to administer death has waned in recent years, it is not
unheard of. Paul Warner Powell,
who was electrocuted in Virginia on March 18,
2010, is the most recent individual to choose electrocution over lethal
injection.
Watch this video
to see the execution of Ted Bundy on 24 January 1989:
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