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| Georgia's High Court Strikes Down Use of Electric Chair |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 10/15/2001 |
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Georgia's highest court struck down the state's use of the electric chair last week, saying electrocution violates the constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment. In a 4-3 decision, the court said that death by electrocution 'inflicts purposeless physical violence and needless mutilation that makes no measurable contribution to accepted goals of punishment.' The ruling leaves just two states with the electric chair, Alabama and Nebraska. With the ruling, the state automatically switches to the use of lethal injection under a law passed last year to provide an alternate method of execution if the courts ruled electrocution illegal. Mike Light, a spokesman for the Department of Corrections, said the death chamber at the state prison near Jackson about 40 miles south of Atlanta has been retrofitted for injection. 'We are fully prepared to carry out the order of the courts.' Some 441 people have been put to death in Georgia's electric chair since it replaced hanging in 1924. The long-awaited decision was a victory for lawyers who three months ago used the graphic photograph of a recently electrocuted prisoner to support their arguments that the electric chair is inhumane. 'We do not need burning flesh, disfigurement, cooking of the brain, the smell of burning flesh at 145 degrees Centigrade,' argued attorney Stephen Bright. The state had countered that electrocution brought immediate unconsciousness. Prior to those arguments, the court had signaled in a series of decisions it was increasingly troubled by electrocution. Electrocution was the sole means of execution in Georgia from 1924 until last year, when the state Legislature ordered lethal injection for all persons convicted of crimes committed after May 1, 2000. |
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