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The current turned off for Old Sparky? [NB This article originally appeared in the Daily Mail on Tuesday August 7th 2001. It is reprinted here in full.] After 111 years, the electric chair heads for the museum as states opt for a lethal jab instead. The electric chair, America's most gruesome instrument of death for 111 years, is facing retirement. One by one, states are pulling the plug on the chairs popularly known as Old Sparky. They are being removed from death chambers and handed over to museums as relics of an execution method whose time has passed. It is now 13 months since the chair was last used and only two states, Nebraska and Alabama, retain it as the sole method of execution. In both these states legislators are about to switch to lethal injection. Eight other states offer the condemned a choice between electrocution and lethal injection, but most are moving towards injection as the only acceptable form of execution. William Kemmier, who was convicted of the axe murder of his lover, was the first man to be electrocuted, in New York's Auburn State Prison on August 6, 1890. Since then 4,300 people in 26 states have suffered the same fate. The last was Michael Clagett, 39, who was executed on July 6 last year in Virginia. The demise of Old Sparky has nothing to do with any softening of attitudes towards crime. More people are being executed than at any time in the nation's history, but there is a growing abhorrence to electrocution, which has been compared by opponents to burning people at the stake. Stephen Bright, director of the Southern centre for Human Rights in Atlanta, said: 'The chair will be officially retired very shortly. It is bad press for the death penalty. It is not the kind of emblem proponents want to have.' In many states, especially in the South, the switch to lethal injection is not so much a humanitarian consideration as a political move - for it is thought the U.S. Supreme Court could soon outlaw the chair as 'cruel and unusual punishment.' Since the Supreme Court allowed the restoration of the death penalty in 1976, most states have used it with varying degrees of enthusiasm, with only 13 of the 50 states still rejecting capital punishment. Texas, the home state of President George W Bush, leads the way in executions, having conducted nearly 250 since restoration. Recent bungled executions in Florida marked the beginning of the end for the electric chair. One victim bled from the nose and two had flames shooting from their heads. The publicity which followed was used to resurrect the whole issue of the death penalty. Some states have wanted to keep 'death by electrocution' on the statute books, along with the more clinical alternative of lethal injection, so as to offer a choice to the condemned. But they may decide to dump the chair altogether because of a case in Ohio. That state is now stuck with the embarrassment of a prisoner wanting to go to the electric chair. John Byrd Jnr is scheduled to die on September 12 and his choice has sent prison officials and legislators scrambling to dump the chair. Byrd's lawyer David Bodicker said: 'If they are going to take his life, he wants them to have to do it in the most difficult manner.' Prisons admit that electrocution is no easy process. The chair has to be checked and double checked before the execution. The prisoner's head and a leg have to be shaved and the connections soaked in brine before the electrodes are attached to the head and ankle. The executioner pulls a handle sending 2,200 volts through the prisoner for 30 seconds. Doctors check the inmate's heart and if it is still beating another jolt is applied. Jolts can also be applied a third and fourth time if necessary. During the electrocution, internal organs burn and skin changes colour. Witnesses to the first execution described it as 'gruesome', with sparks flying around the dying man's head. The chair was promptly nicknamed 'Old Sparky' and New York's notorious Sing Sing Prison became its new home. Several prisoners have had dramatic last reprieves from Old Sparky. On December 12, 1929, New York governor F.D. Roosevelt telephoned warders at Sing Sing to call off an execution with only 15 minutes to spare. Frederick W. Edel had been convicted of a woman's murder but new evidence came to light which cast doubt on his guilt. Some strange facts:- · The origin of the chair was in 1881 when dentist Albert Southwick saw an elderly drunkard touch the terminals of an electrical generator in Buffalo, New York. He was amazed how quickly and apparently painlessly the man died and described the episode to his friend, a senator. · In 1887, electricity pioneer Thomas Edison conducted a demonstration in New Jersey to show the potential of using electricity for capital punishment. He killed large numbers of cats and dogs by luring the animals on to a metal plate wired to a 1,000-volt AC generator. · Twenty-Five women have been sent to the chair, including Ruth Snyder, who was executed in New York in 1928 for the murder of her husband. The moment was captured on film after a photographer entered the death chamber with a hidden camera strapped to his leg. · The only person known to have survived the chair was Willie Francis, after drunken Louisianna prison staff failed to connect the cables, causing less than the full current to pass through his body. A year later, following an appeal, he went back to the chair and the job was finished. · Botched executions include one in Florida in 1997, when foot-high flames shot from the head of the prisoner, Pedro Medina, filling the chamber with smoke. An official threw a switch to cut off the power and Medina was left to burn to death. · A killer who won a reprieve from the chair in 1986 ended up accidentally electrocuting himself as he watched TV in his cell. The headphones Howard Baker was wearing carried a current from his TV set to the stainless steel toilet he was sitting on, sending a lethal current through his body. · One of the most notorious criminals to die by electrocution was Ted Bundy, who was executed in 1989 after abducting, raping and murdering up to 50 women. · The last British-born man to die in the chair was Nick Ingram, 32, in Georgia in 1995. He had been on death row for 12 years, having shot dead a man he tied to a tree after breaking into his home. Some web links: History of the electric chair http://www.theelectricchair.com/history.htm All about the electric chair by Marlee MacLeod http://www.crimelibrary.com/classics4/electric/bibliography.htm
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