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| Electric Chairs Being Retired |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 08/20/2001 |
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Despite the affectionate nicknames - Old Smokey, Yellow Mama, Old Sparky - there has been nothing gentle about America's most lethal line of furniture. More than 4,300 people in 26 states have gone to the electric chair since William Kemmler, convicted of the ax-murder of his lover, was electrocuted at New York's Auburn State Prison on Aug. 6, 1890. Now, 111 years later, experts predict the electric chair will soon become a relic. No inmate has been electrocuted for 13 months, and most states that have the chair have switched to lethal injection, considered less likely to be outlawed as cruel and unusual punishment. Stephen Bright, director of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, expects to see the electric chair retired 'very shortly. It's bad press for the death penalty. It's not the kind of emblem that proponents want to have.' Several states that once relied exclusively on the chair now offer condemned inmates a choice of electrocution or lethal injection. Only Nebraska and Alabama have the chair as the sole method of execution. Pro-death penalty lawmakers in both states are trying to switch to lethal injection; opposition has come from die-hard supporters of the chair and from legislators who prefer abolishing capital punishment. Some predict electrocution will soon be outlawed by the courts. In Ohio, which offers a choice between lethal injection or electrocution, prison officials asked lawmakers last month to abandon the chair because of concerns about possible malfunctions. |
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