Electric chair

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Electric chair in Florida State Prison

The electric chair is a device used to execute a person using an electric current .

History of invention

By chance, the dentist Alfred P. Southwick witnessed an accident in 1881 in which a drunk old man touched a generator and died instantly. He related the incident to his friend, Senator David McMillan , who in turn told Governor David B. Hill with the idea of replacing hanging as a cruel method of execution. In 1886, the New York State Parliament established a commission to find a "humane and convenient" method of execution. Was commissioned Thomas Edison with the investigation of a method of execution by electricity.

The electric chair was developed by Edison's colleague Harold P. Brown . Since Edison was strongly committed to Brown's work, he is considered the inventor of the electric chair. Edison and George Westinghouse , who advocated alternating current, had a bitter dispute about which type of current was safer to use. Edison tried to prove the dangerousness of the alternating current of his adversary through several tests with cats and horses.

In 1903, Harold P. Brown even “executed” the elephant Topsy , who killed three men, including one of your guards, using alternating current. The animal was killed by placing its feet on metal plates and holding it in place with chains before alternating current was passed through the metal plates. The occasional statement that this killing of animals ultimately led to the development of the electric chair as a tool for execution is factually incorrect. The first alternating current execution of a person took place 13 years earlier (see below).

The electric chair was designed for alternating current , and Edison suggested the term electrocution or to westinghouse for execution on the electric chair. Westinghouse protested publicly. He hired a well-known star lawyer to deal with the matter. Westinghouse worried about the reputation of his company, which wanted to earn money with the allegedly dangerous AC voltage. After 14 months, the hearing was over and Edison was allowed to prepare the electric chair for use for an execution. Most of the experiments by Edison and Brown took place in Edison's West Orange Laboratory in New Jersey in 1888.

History of practice

The first example of the electric chair on which William Kemmler died in 1890
How to Use the Electric Chair in the United States:
  • Currently planned as a further method of execution, along with other methods
  • Has been used as a method of execution in the past
  • Not used as a method of execution at any time

    • Electric execution was introduced on January 1, 1889. A law came into effect in New York State providing for the use of the electric chair to execute criminals sentenced to death. This type of death, previously tested on animals and perceived as “more human” than hanging , was first used on August 6, 1890 in Auburn State Prison in New York State.

    The first person to be executed on an electric chair was William Kemmler , who was sentenced to death for an ax murder of his girlfriend. The execution at Auburn Prison was carried out by the state electrician Edwin Davis . Kemmler was lashed to the prepared chair and connected to an electrode on the back and one on the head (the leg electrode was only introduced later). First a voltage of 1000 volts was set. After the electricity was switched on, Kemmler convulsed with severe twitching and writhed in pain. The power was switched off for the first time after 17 seconds. To the horror of the doctors and witnesses present, however, Kemmler was still alive. The convict gasped, gasped and vomited. It was therefore decided to double the voltage and thus increase it to 2000 volts. The convict was only dead when the electricity was switched off after a further 70 seconds. A New York press reporter who witnessed the execution subsequently described this new method of execution as an extremely cruel and excruciating way of killing someone: "A horrific spectacle - far worse than hanging. ”George Westinghouse was also stunned:“ They could have done better with an ax, ”he is quoted as saying (“ They could have done better with an ax. ”). The first woman to be executed by the electric chair was Martha M. Place on March 20, 1899. She was sentenced to death for the murder of her stepdaughter Ida. Like before William Kemmler, she also died from Edwin Davis as a State Electrician.

    The first electric chair in Texas , called “ Old Sparky ” in some other states of the USA , was built in 1924 by a death row inmate and was in use for almost 40 years. It was not replaced by a more modern model until 1964. The trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg , accused of espionage , who were executed on June 19, 1953, attracted particular attention . The first electric chair execution since the Supreme Court's suspension of the death penalty between 1972 and 1976 took place on May 25, 1979, when John Arthur Spenkelink was executed in Florida State Prison .

    The last US state to use the electric chair as the only execution method was Nebraska . However, the method was declared unconstitutional by the state's highest court on February 8, 2008 because it was a particularly "cruel and unusual" method of execution. The court further stated: "It is the hallmark of a civilized society that we punish cruelty without using it ourselves."

    However, the states of Alabama , Florida , South Carolina and Virginia still use this method, and Arkansas and Oklahoma reserve the right to use it in the event that currently used methods are found to be unconstitutional. The same applies to Tennessee . In Kentucky , the death row inmates are only executed with lethal injection , but the convicts can also be executed in the electric chair at their own request, provided that their verdict was pronounced before the abolition date. As the last convict to date, 58-year-old Nicholas Sutton was executed on February 20, 2020 in Tennessee on the electric chair.

    The Philippines also used the electric chair from 1924 to 1976. Other countries stopped using the electric chair.

    functionality

    The convict is tied to the chair with leather straps
    Condemned man with electrodes attached

    The convict is tied to the chair with several wide leather straps and an electrode is attached to his shaved head with a chin strap. Another electrode is attached to the shaved lower leg. In order to ensure a sufficient flow of current, a natural sponge soaked with saturated saline solution is placed between the electrode and the skin. The convict's head is then attached to the center post of the backrest with a leather strap that covers the face from chin to eyes (and sometimes has a recess for the nose). In some states, a hood made of black fabric is also pulled over the convict's head.

    Several electric shocks are used during the execution, with each state in the USA determining their number, duration and strength in its own execution protocol .

    • Example Florida: 2.3  kV (9.5  A ) for 8 seconds, 1 kV (4 A) for 22 seconds and another 2.3 kV (9.5 A) for 8 seconds.
    • Example Virginia: 1.8 kV (7.5 A) for 30 seconds and 240 V (1.5 A) for 60 seconds; is repeated once.

    As soon as the current flows, all muscles cramp , the body is thrown against the belts, the hands cling to the armrests of the chair or clench into fists, and the head is hyperextended backwards (as far as possible by the fixation). Meanwhile, the convicts defecate and urinate , some bleed from their noses, saliva or vomit blood. In some cases the electric chairs were adapted to these conditions, in other cases the convicts have to wear diapers. In some cases, the convict's eyes burst from their sockets. After a subsequent cooling-off phase of usually five minutes, the convict's body is monitored for heartbeat with a stethoscope. Death occurs through respiratory paralysis and cardiac arrest.

    There are numerous reports that the bodies of the convicts began to burn or transformers overheated, so that the executions had to be interrupted. In 1946, for example, the method failed with Willie Francis , who reportedly wrote “Take it off! Let me breathe! ”Yelled (“ Stop it! Let me breathe! ”). Then a process before the US Supreme Court (Francis vs. Resweber) should clarify whether Francis had already been executed or whether he would have to be executed again. Francis lost the trial and was killed in his second execution a year later.

    Even with regular executions, severe burns can occur on the skin, so that it burns to the contact points, partly on the stool or rather on the electrodes.

    Reference and representation in art, film and music

    • The American pop art artist Andy Warhol used the electric chair as a motif for his works on various occasions, including the Electric Chair screen-printing series created in 1963 .
    • The Australian musicians Nick Cave and Mick Harvey wrote the song The Mercy Seat (1988; template for the cover version of the American country singer Johnny Cash from 2000).
    • The British artist Paul Fryer made the wax sculpture Pietà ( Jesus on the electric chair; exhibited in Gap Cathedral (Hautes-Alpes) during Holy Week 2009) in 2006 .
    • The American thrash metal band Metallica makes reference to death by means of the electric chair in their song Ride The Lightning (1984; from the album Ride the Lightning ).
    • In the music video for Wake Up Call by the rock group Maroon 5 , it is hinted at the end of front man Adam Levine being executed on an electric chair.
    • The music video of the band Motörhead for the title Killed by Death also shows a scene of singer and bassist Lemmy Kilmister being tied to an electric chair, being executed on it and then a funeral taking place.
    • In some films such as The Green Mile , Ted Bundy (2002) , Carolina Skeletons , Sin City and Shocker , executions on the electric chair are portrayed, sometimes with extreme brutality.
    • The episode The Electric Chair by X-Factor: The Incredible deals with the electrocution of innocents.
    • The American musician Prince addressed in his song Electric Chair (1989) that freedom of expression cannot be a criminal offense.
    • The American country and western musician Marty Robbins (* 1925, † 1982) described going to the electric chair and the subsequent execution on it in his 1971 ballad The Chair as a narrator in the first person. (Columbia LP # C 30816 (1971) Title: TODAY)
    • The German electro band Feindflug takes a critical look at the use of the electric chair on their EPs Im Visier (Track 4 Stromtod , release date: 1999) and Euthanasia (Track 2, Kötungsmaschine Mensch , release date: 2000). Since the band completely dispenses with vocals in their albums, they use various language samples.
    • In the US series Prison Break , the sequence of the execution of the fictional character "Lincoln Burrows" on the electric chair is shown twice in the first season.
    • In the second DLC of the game Call of Duty: Black Ops II (2012), the electric chair plays a crucial role on the zombie map "Mob of the Dead" - a horror version of Alcatraz Island . The four main criminal characters are caught in a time warp that always ends with their death as a result of electrification as a punishment for their crimes.
    • The song It's done by the German rock band Böhse Onkelz , addresses the situation of a man sentenced to death who is supposed to die from the electric chair. On the cover of the album of the same name, comic-style details of an electric chair are shown.

    literature

    • Craig Brandon: The Electric Chair. An Unnatural American History. McFarland and Company Publishers, Jefferson / London 1999, ISBN 0-7864-0686-0 .
    • Mark Regan Essig: Edison and the electric chair. A story of light and death. Walker and Company, New York 2003, ISBN 0-8027-1406-4 .
    • Markus Hedrich: Medical violence: electrotherapy, electric chair and psychiatric "electroshock therapy" in the USA, 1890–1950 (= history , volume 67). Transcript, Bielefeld 2014, ISBN 978-3-8376-2802-9 (Dissertation University of Cologne 2013, 343 pages).

    Web links

    Commons : Electric Chair  - Collection of Images

    Individual evidence

    1. ^ AG Christians, JA Christians: Alfred P. Southwick, MDS, DDS: dental practitioner, educator and originator of electrical executions. In: Journal of the History of Dentistry. Volume 48, Number 3, November 2000, pp. 117-122, PMID 11806253 .
    2. ↑ Craig Brandon: The Electric Chair. An Unnatural American History. McFarland and Company Publishers, Jefferson / London 1999, pp. 12-13.
    3. ↑ Craig Brandon: The Electric Chair. An Unnatural American History. McFarland and Company Publishers, Jefferson / London 1999, p. 7.
    4. ^ Robert Walsh: William Kemmler - The First Electrocution, August 6, 1890. (No longer available online.) August 6, 2014, archived from the original on October 13, 2016 ; accessed on January 28, 2017 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / robertwalshwriter.wordpress.com
    5. ↑ Craig Brandon: The Electric Chair. An Unnatural American History. McFarland and Company Publishers, Jefferson / London 1999, p. 185.
    6. ↑ 125 years of the electric chair - Modern Morden . Spiegel online, August 3, 2015, accessed on August 3, 2015.
    7. ^ Electric chair in Nebraska unconstitutional n-tv.de, February 8, 2008.
    8. ↑ Court forbids electric chair. In: Focus Online. February 9, 2008, accessed January 28, 2017 .
    9. ↑ Man executed with an electric chair . n-tv.de
    10. ↑ Executions in the Philippines from 1924 to 1976 . ( Memento from October 11, 2004 in the Internet Archive )
    11. ^ Florida Department of Corrections .
    12. ↑ Josh White: In Virginia's death chamber, a rare death by electrocution Washington Post, November 18, 2009.
    13. ↑ Helen Prejean : Dead Man Walking. His last course. Goldmann Verlag, Munich 1996, p. 147.
    14. ↑ Craig Brandon: The Electric Chair. An Unnatural American History. McFarland and Company Publishers, Jefferson / London 1999, p. 205.
    15. ↑ Nebraska Bans Electric Chair . Spiegel Online , February 8, 2008; Retrieved July 3, 2013.
    16. ^ State of La. ex Rel. Francis v. Resweber, (1947). In: United States Supreme Court. FindLaw, accessed January 28, 2017 .
    17. ↑ See Louisiana ex rel. Francis v. Resweber in the English language Wikipedia.
    18. ^ Art press review ( Memento of the original from November 6, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Jens Ullheimer), April 8, 2009. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / kunstschau.netsamurai.de
    19. ↑ The time has come: The darkest work to date appears. In: onkelz.de. Retrieved May 30, 2019 (Official website of the band, with album cover illustration).