The F’n Electric Chair

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An American-developed method of execution known as the "electric chair" involves strapping the condemned individual to a specially constructed wooden chair and electrocuting them using electrodes attached to their head and leg. Alfred P. Southwick, a dentist from Buffalo, New York, proposed this form of execution in 1881. It was developed during the 1880s as a purportedly merciful substitute for hanging, and it was first used in 1890. This technique of execution has been utilized for many years in the Philippines and the United States. Death was first thought to arise from brain injury, but research in 1899 revealed that ventricular fibrillation and ultimately cardiac arrest are the main causes of death.

 

Despite the fact that the electric chair has long been associated with the death sentence in the United States, lethal injection, which is generally regarded as a more compassionate mode of execution, has replaced the electric chair as the preferred method of execution. Except in Tennessee and South Carolina, where it may be used without the prisoner's consent if the medications for lethal injection are not available, electrocution is only still permitted as a second option that may be selected over lethal injection at the request of the prisoner in some states. In the states of Alabama and Florida, where lethal injection is an alternate technique, electrocution is an optional method of execution as of 2021. Inmates who are condemned to death for crimes committed before March 31, 1998 and who elect electrocution as their method of execution no longer have access to the electric chair; instead, they are put to death by lethal injection, as are those who do not pick electrocution. In the event that a judge rules that lethal injection is unlawful, electrocution is also permitted in Kentucky. If alternative methods of execution are later determined to be unlawful in the state where the execution is taking place, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Oklahoma have permitted the use of the electric chair as a backup method. On February 8, 2008, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled that the state's constitution prohibits "cruel and unusual punishment," which included electric chair execution. As a result, Nebraska, the only state that continued to use electrocution as the exclusive form of death, stopped carrying out these kinds of executions.

 

Newspaper stories about how the high voltages used to power arc lighting, a type of brilliant outdoor street lighting that required high voltages in the range of 3000-6000 volts, were published one after another in the late 1870s and early 1880s. It was a strange new phenomenon that appeared to instantly strike a victim dead without leaving a mark. On August 7, 1881, one of these mishaps in Buffalo, New York, resulted in the invention of the electric chair. George Lemuel Smith, a drunk dock worker, managed to get back inside the Brush Electric Company arc lighting power house that evening and touch the brush and ground of a large electric dynamo in search of the excitement of a tingling feeling he had felt while holding the guard rail. He died instantaneously. The coroner who looked into the matter brought it up before a Buffalo-area scientific group that year. Alfred P. Southwick, a dentist with a technical background who was also in attendance at the talk, believed the strange event may have some practical use.

 

Southwick participated in a series of studies that involved electrocuting hundreds of stray dogs alongside doctor George E. Fell and the director of the Buffalo ASPCA. They conducted tests using the dog both in and out of the water, and they experimented with the electrode kind and location until they developed a consistent procedure for electrocuting animals. After publishing his theories in scholarly publications in 1882 and 1883, Southwick went on to argue for the employment of this technique as a more compassionate alternative to hanging in capital cases in the early 1880s. His work gained widespread attention. In an effort to create a system that might be scaled up to operate on people, he developed calculations based on the dog experimentation. Early on in his plans, he used a modified dental chair to confine the condemned; this chair would later come to be known as the electric chair.

 

There was growing opposition to hangings in particular and the death penalty in general following a string of botched executions in the United States. A three-person death penalty commission was established in 1886 by newly elected New York State Governor David B. Hill to look into more humane ways of carrying out executions. The commission was chaired by the human rights activist and reformer Elbridge Thomas Gerry and included Southwick and lawyer and politician Matthew Hale from New York. There was growing opposition to hangings in particular and the death penalty in general following a string of botched executions in the United States. A three-person death penalty commission was established in 1886 by newly elected New York State Governor David B. Hill to look into more humane ways of carrying out executions. The commission was chaired by the human rights activist and reformer Elbridge Thomas Gerry and included Southwick and lawyer and politician Matthew Hale from New York. They also went to George Fell's dog electrocutions, who had collaborated with Southwick on early 1880s tests. Fell continued his research by electrocuting sedated, vivisected dogs in an effort to understand how electricity killed a victim. The Commission suggested execution in 1888 utilizing Southwick's electric chair concept, with the convicted person's head and feet hooked to metal wires. With three electric chairs put up at the jails in Auburn, Clinton, and Sing Sing, they further suggested that the state execute prisoners rather than the individual counties. These ideas were incorporated into a measure that was approved by the legislature, signed by Governor Hill on June 4, 1888, and was scheduled to take effect on January 1, 1889.

 

The New York Medico-Legal Society, an unofficial organization made up of physicians and lawyers, was tasked with assessing these criteria because the bill itself did not specify the kind or quantity of electricity that should be utilized. Since tests up to that point had been conducted on animals smaller than a human (dogs), some committee members weren't sure that the lethality of alternating current (AC) had been conclusively proven. In September 1888, a committee was formed and recommended 3000 volts, but the type of electricity, direct current (DC) or alternating current (AC), wasn't determined.

 

At this point, the state's efforts to develop the electric chair were mixed up with the conflict between Thomas Edison's direct current power system and George Westinghouse's alternating current-based system, which came to be known as the "war of the currents." Since 1886, the two businesses had been engaged in commercial competition. In 1888, a sequence of circumstances led to an all-out media war between the two. Frederick Peterson, a neurologist who served as the committee's chair, hired Harold P. Brown to serve as a consultant. After numerous people died as a result of the careless installation of pole-mounted AC arc lighting lines in New York City in the early months of 1888, Brown embarked on his own war against alternating current. Peterson had assisted Brown when he publicly electrocuted dogs with AC in July 1888 at Columbia College in an effort to demonstrate that AC was more lethal than DC.  Thomas Edison's West Orange laboratory offered technical support for these experiments, and an unofficial alliance between Edison Electric and Brown developed. On December 5, 1888, Brown set up an experiment back at West Orange as Thomas Edison, members of the press, and members of the Medico-Legal Society, including Elbridge Gerry, the head of the death sentence panel, watched. Brown conducted all of his experiments on animals larger than humans using alternating current, including four calves and a lame horse, which were all operated under 750 volts of AC.  The Medico-Legal Society advocated using 1000–1500 volts of alternating electricity for executions based on these findings, and newspapers emphasized that the voltage used was just half that of the power lines that run over the streets of American cities. Westinghouse denounced these experiments as biased self-serving demonstrations intended to constitute an outright attack on alternating current, and he charged Brown of working for Edison. Members of the Medico-Legal Society, including electrotherapy specialist Alphonse David Rockwell, Carlos Frederick MacDonald, and Columbia College professor Louis H. Laudy, were tasked with determining the specifics of electrode placement at the request of death sentence panel chairman Gerry. They resorted to Brown once more for the technical support. Treasurer Francis S. Hastings, who appeared to be one of the key figures at the company trying to portray Westinghouse as a peddler of death dealing AC current, tried to acquire a Westinghouse AC generator for the test but discovered that none could be acquired. Brown requested that Edison Electric Light supply the equipment for the tests. They ultimately used Edison's West Orange facility for the animal testing they carried out in the middle of March 1889. Austin E. Lathrop, the superintendent of prisons, petitioned Brown to create the chair, but Brown declined.  Dr. George Fell created the final designs for a straightforward oak chair, deviating from the suggestions of the Medico-Legal Society by moving the electrodes to the head and the center of the back.  Brown did accept the responsibility of locating the generators required to run the chair. With the aid of Edison and Westinghouse's main AC competitor, the Thomson-Houston Electric Company, he was able to covertly purchase three Westinghouse AC generators that were being retired, ensuring that Westinghouse's equipment would be connected to the first execution. Edwin F. Davis, the first "state electrician" (executioner) for the State of New York, constructed the electric chair.

 

Joseph Chapleau, who had been sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty of killing his neighbor with a sled stake, became the first victim of New York's new electrocution legislation. William Kemmler, who had been found guilty of killing his wife with a hatchet, was the next prisoner on the death row. Kemmler filed an appeal on his behalf with the New York Court of Appeals, arguing that the use of electricity as a manner of execution amounted to "cruel and unusual punishment" that was in violation of both the federal and state constitutions of the United States. Kemmler's petition for a writ of habeas corpus was rejected by the court on December 30, 1889, according to a long decision by Judge Dwight: 

“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 an attempt the condemnation of the Constitution. The question now to be answered is whether the legislative act here 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.”

 

On August 6, 1890, Kemmler was put to death in Auburn Prison in New York; Edwin F. Davis served as the "state electrician." Kemmler was rendered unconscious after being exposed to 1,000 volts of AC electricity for the first 17 seconds, but his heart and respiration were left unaffected. Edward Charles Spitzka and Carlos F. MacDonald, the attending doctors, stepped forward to examine Kemmler. Spitzka allegedly said, "Have the current turned on again, quick, no delay," after making sure Kemmler was still alive. But the generator required some time to recharge. A 2,000 volt AC shock was administered to Kemmler on the second attempt. The skin's blood vessels burst, bled, and caught fire in the vicinity of the electrodes. It took roughly eight minutes to complete the execution. A reporter who witnessed the execution reported that it was "an horrible scene, considerably worse than hanging," and George Westinghouse subsequently said, "They would have done better using an ax."

 

Following its adoption by Ohio (1897), Massachusetts (1900), New Jersey (1906), and Virginia (1908), the electric chair quickly replaced hanging as the most often used form of execution in the country. Death by electrocution was either legal or actively used to kill offenders in 26 US States, the District of Columbia, the Federal government, and the US Military. Until the middle of the 1980s, when lethal injection became the method of choice for carrying out legal executions, the electric chair remained the most popular execution technique. 

 

It appears that other nations have thought about employing the technique, occasionally for unique motives. From 1926 to 1987, the electric chair was also used in the Philippines. In May 1972, Jaime Jose, Basilio Pineda, and Edgardo Aquino were killed there in a well-known triple execution for the 1967 kidnapping and gang rape of the young actress Maggie de la Riva. Lethal injection was used instead of the electric chair when executions resumed in the Philippines after a break in 1976.

 

Some accounts claim that Ethiopia tried to use the electric chair as a means of capital punishment. According to legend, the emperor Menelik II purchased three electric chairs in 1896 at the urging of a missionary, but was unable to put them to use since his country did not have a stable source of electricity at the time. Menelik II is rumored to have used the third electric chair as a throne, while the other two chairs were either utilized as garden furniture or gifted to guests.

 

During the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment, the results of which were released in 1953, the United Kingdom explored lethal injection in addition to lethal injection, the electric chair, the gas chamber, the guillotine, and gunshot as alternatives to hanging. The Commission came to the conclusion that hanging was preferable to the electric chair in no specific way. In the UK, the death penalty was abolished for the majority of offenses in 1965.

 

In 1894, serial killer Lizzie Halliday was given a death sentence via electric chair; however, after a medical committee deemed her crazy, governor Roswell P. Flower reduced her death sentence to life in a mental hospital. Maria Barbella, a second woman who received a death sentence in 1895, was exonerated the following year. On March 20, 1899, Martha M. Place at Sing Sing Prison became the first female to be put to death by electric chair for the murder of her stepdaughter Ida Place, who was 17 years old.

 

Ruth Snyder, a housewife, was put to death in the electric chair at Sing Sing on the evening of January 12, 1928, for the murder of her husband in March of that year. Tom Howard, a news photographer, sneaked a camera into the execution chamber and captured her in the electric chair as the current was put on for a front-page story in the New York Daily News the next morning. It continues to be among the most well-known instances in photojournalism.

 

On July 13, 1928, a record was set at the Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville, Kentucky, when seven men were put to death in the electric chair one after the other.

 

George Stinney, an African-American boy, was electrocuted at the Central Correctional Institution in Columbia, South Carolina, on June 16, 1944, making him the youngest person ever to be put to death by the electric chair. In 2014, a circuit court judge annulled his sentence and reversed his conviction on the grounds that Stinney had not received a fair trial. The judge found that Stinney's legal representation fell short of his constitutional rights as guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment.

 

Following the Gregg v. Georgia ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976, John Spenkelink was the first person to be electrocuted on May 25, 1979. He was the first person to be put to death in this way in the United States since 1966.

 

Lynda Lyon Block was the last person to be put to death in the electric chair without having the option of a different execution technique on May 10, 2002 in Alabama.

 

On the day of the execution, the condemned prisoner's legs and head are both shaved. The condemned prisoner is led to the chair and placed there before having their arms and legs firmly restrained with leather belts to prevent movement or struggle. The prisoner's legs are shaved, and electrodes are fastened to them. A hat covering his head is made of a sponge soaked in saltwater or brine. To avoid presenting a gory scene to the onlookers, the prisoner may wear a hood or be blinded.

 

The execution starts when the prisoner is told the order of death and given the chance to say one last thing. Alternating current is delivered through a person's body in several cycles (changes in voltage and length) to fatally harm their internal organs. The initial, stronger electric shock (between 2000 and 2,500 volts) is meant to induce instantaneous unconsciousness, ventricular fibrillation, and eventually cardiac arrest. The goal of the second, weaker shock (500–1,500 volts) is to fatally harm the essential organs.

 

A medical professional examines the prisoner for signs of life once the cycles are finished. If none are found, the medical professional notes the moment of death and waits for the body to cool before removing it to prepare for an autopsy. The doctor alerts the warden if the prisoner shows signs of life, and the warden would often order another round of electric current or (rarely) postpone the execution (see Willie Francis).

 

The reliability of the first electrical shock to consistently cause rapid unconsciousness, as proponents of the electric chair sometimes say, is disputed by opponents. According to witness accounts, electrocutions gone wrong (see Willie Francis and Allen Lee Davis) and results of post-mortem investigations, the electric chair is frequently unpleasant during executions.

 

The electric chair has drawn criticism since in a few cases the victims were only put to death after receiving many electric shocks. As a result, the practice was called into question as being "cruel and unusual punishment." In an effort to allay these worries, Nebraska implemented a new electrocution procedure in 2004 that required the delivery of a 15-second application of electricity at 2,450 volts, followed by a 15-minute wait period during which a representative checked for signs of life. The current Nebraska protocol, which calls for a 20-second application of current at 2,450 volts, was introduced in April 2007 in response to further concerns voiced about the 2004 procedure.

 

Before the 2004 protocol revision, a first application of current at 2,450 volts for eight seconds, a one-second interval, and then a 22-second application at 480 volts were given. The cycle was performed three more times after a 20-second rest.

 

Willie Francis tried to escape the electric chair in 1946 and reportedly screamed, "Take it off! Let me Breathe!" when the current was turned on. It turned out that an inebriated jail officer and convict had illegally set up the portable electric chair. In a case titled Louisiana ex rel. Francis v. Resweber, attorneys for the convicted person contended that, although not dying, Francis had indeed been put to death. Francis was put back in the electric chair and killed in 1947 after the argument was rejected on the grounds that re-execution did not violate the double jeopardy provision of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

 

Allen Lee Davis, who had been found guilty of murder, was put to death in Florida on July 8, 1999, using the "Old Sparky" electric chair. Pictures of Davis' injured face were taken and afterwards uploaded to the Internet. According to the results of the study, Davis had started bleeding before the electricity was turned on, and the chair had performed as planned. According to Florida's Supreme Court, the electric chair is not "cruel and unusual punishment." When flames sprang from Pedro Medina's skull during his execution in Florida in 1997, it stirred much debate. Medina's brain and brain stem were damaged by the initial electrical surge, which caused him to pass away quickly, according to an autopsy. A court determined that "unintentional human error" rather than any flaws in the "apparatus, equipment, and electrical circuitry" of Florida's electric chair was to blame for the occurrence.

 

The Louisiana legislature modified the manner of death in 1940; as of June 1, 1941, electrocution was the only option left. At first, Louisiana's electric chair was moved from parish to parish to carry out executions since it lacked a permanent location. Typically, the electrocution would take place in the jail or courtroom of the parish where the condemned prisoner had been found guilty. The first person to be executed with an electric chair in Louisiana was Eugene Johnson, a black man who was found guilty of stealing and killing Steven Bench, a white farmer who resided close to Albany. Johnson was killed at the Livingston Parish Jail on September 11, 1941. 

 

To house all executions in Louisiana, it was decided to construct an execution chamber in the Louisiana State Penitentiary in 1957. Elmo Patrick Sonnier, the prisoner who served as the inspiration for the movie Dead Man Walking, and Willie Francis were notable executions on the chair (the only inmate to survive the electric chair; he was ultimately executed after the first attempt failed). Lethal injection was chosen by the State of Louisiana as the only execution technique in 1991 as a result of new law. Andrew Lee Jones was the last person put to death aboard "Gruesome Gertie" on July 22, 1991. Eighty-seven executions took place using "Gruesome Gertie" during the course of its fifty-year lifespan. The Louisiana Prison Museum presently houses it.  Death row convicts referred to the electric chair in Louisiana as " Gruesome Gertie."  It is also well-known for being the first electric chair execution to fail, when Willie Francis was put to death. As mentioned earlier.

 

The electric chair used in New Jersey's state prisons, known as Old Smokey, is displayed in the New Jersey State Police Museum. Richard Hauptmann, the person responsible for the Lindbergh kidnapping, was the chair's most well-known victim.

The electric chair in Tennessee and Pennsylvania both went by this moniker.

 

Alabama in the United States has an electric chair called Yellow Mama. From 1927 through 2002, executions were held there.

 

The chair was first put at Kilby State Prison in Montgomery, Alabama, where it was given the moniker "Yellow Mama" after being sprayed with highway-line paint from the nearby State Highway Department lab. The chair was created by a British prisoner in 1927, the same year that Horace DeVauhan was executed for the first time.

 

Lynda Lyon Block, who was executed in 2002, was the final person to be executed in Yellow Mama. Since then, the chair has been kept at the Holman Correctional Facility in an attic above the execution room.

 

Since the introduction of lethal injection in 1979, which is now the standard procedure in all U.S. counties that permit capital punishment, the usage of the electric chair has decreased.

 

Only the American states of Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee still allow the use of the electric chair as a method of execution as of 2021. The laws of Arkansas and Oklahoma allow for its application in the event that lethal injection is ever ruled to be unlawful. It or lethal injection are the only options available to inmates in the other states. Only prisoners convicted in Kentucky prior to a specific date may choose to be executed by electric chair. In the event that a judge rules that lethal injection is unlawful, electrocution is also permitted in Kentucky.

 

Tennessee was one of the states that offered convicts the option of the electric chair or a lethal injection; nevertheless, the state approved a statute enabling the use of the electric chair in the event that lethal injection medicines were unavailable or rendered inadmissible in May 2014.

 

The Nebraska Supreme Court ruled on February 15, 2008, that the Nebraska Constitution forbids "cruel and unusual punishment," which includes death by electrocution.

 

Before Furman v. Georgia, Oklahoma witnessed the last legal electrocution in the US. This occurred in 1966. The electric chair was used relatively regularly in post-Gregg v. Georgia executions throughout the 1980s, but as lethal injection became more popular in the 1990s, its use in the United States steadily decreased. The most recent US electrocution, that of Nicholas Todd Sutton,  who was responsible for murdering two acquaintances and his own grandmother in North Carolina and Tennessee from August to December 1979, took place in Tennessee in February 2020. A handful of states still give the death penalty option to the convicted, allowing them to choose between lethal injection and electrocution.

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