South Carolina judge declares electric chair and firing squad unconstitutional

South Carolina Circuit Court Judge Jocelyn Newman ruled that the state’s planned use of a firing squad and an electric chair for executions was unconstitutional, reported Jurist. This ruling grants relief to four death row inmates.

Freddie Eugene Owens, Brad Keith Sigmon, Gary Dubose Terry, and Richard Bernard Moore were all convicted of committing at least one murder and sentenced to death. After the convictions, South Carolina passed Bill 200, which changed the default method of execution in the state to electrocution. The law also added a firing squad as an option. In addition, the law could force inmates into execution by the electric chair if they refuse to elect a method of execution. In response to the law, the inmates sued, alleging that death by electrocution and firing squad are unconstitutional under the state’s constitution.

Judge Newman’s order held that electrocution and firing squads violate Article 1 Section 15 of the state’s constitution. South Carolina’s constitution does not allow cruel, unusual, or corporal punishment. Corporal regards mutilation of the human body. The order held that using Bill 200 would violate ex post facto laws of the state and federal Constitution. Ex post facto prohibits “law that changes the punishment, inflicts a greater punishment than the law annexed to the crime, when committed.” The order also held that the statute was unconstitutionally vague and violated the plaintiffs’ due process rights.

The ruling found Bill 200 unconstitutional and vague and permanently enjoined the defendants from forcing the four plaintiffs to be executed by electrocution or firing squad. Earlier this year, the South Carolina Supreme Court blocked the state from committing a firing squad execution.

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South Carolina halts executions waiting on firing squad

South Carolina Supreme Court has blocked two executions until the inmates are given the choice of death by electrocution or firing squad, reported the BBC News Service.

A new law requires inmates on death row to decide between the two methods if lethal drugs are not available.

But as prison authorities have not yet formed a firing squad, the executions have been halted by the supreme court.

Inmates Brad Sigmon and Freddie Owens were due to be executed this month.

The convicted murderers were denied lethal injections - their favored option - because prison authorities did not have the drugs needed.

A shortage of these drugs has led to a 10-year pause in this method of execution in the state.

The new law, which came into effect last month, was designed to close a loophole that allowed inmates to indefinitely postpone their executions if the drugs were not available.

Lawyers for the inmates argued that electrocution was cruel and unusual

Given the lack of a firing squad, electrocution was the only method of execution available in the state.

But lawyers for Sigmon and Owens challenged the use of the method in court, arguing their clients have the right to die by lethal injection.

They petitioned the South Carolina Supreme Court to stop the planned executions of their clients until their appeals had been heard.

The court ruled in their favor, saying the inmates had not been given the choice "to elect the manner of their execution".

The court said no further execution notices should be issued until "protocols and policies to carry out executions by firing squad" are in place.

In response to the court order, the state's prison authorities said it was "moving ahead with creating policies and procedures for a firing squad".

"We are looking to other states for guidance through this process. We will notify the court when a firing squad becomes an option for executions," the South Carolina Department of Corrections said.

Only four US states allow executions by firing squad

South Carolina is one of four states that allow executions by firing squad. Oklahoma, Mississippi and Utah are the others.

Sigmon, 63, was scheduled to be executed on Friday. He has spent nearly two decades on death row after he was convicted in 2002 of killing his ex-girlfriend's parents with a baseball bat.

Owens's execution was planned for 25 June. The 43-year-old has been on and off death row since 1999, when he was convicted of murdering a shop worker during a robbery spree.

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MCN/USA TODAY NETWORK: Commonwealths unite in disdain for capital punishment

 Matthew T. Mangino
MCN/USA TODAY NETWORK
March 26, 2021

This week, the Commonwealth of Virginia officially abolished the death penalty, making it the first Southern state to ban capital punishment.

“Justice and punishment are not always the same thing, that is too clearly evident in 400 years of the death penalty in Virginia,” Gov. Ralph Northam said during remarks ahead of signing the legislation, saying that it is both the right and the moral thing to do.

While Virginia has now become the first state of the former Confederacy to ban the death penalty, it is the 23rd state overall, following Colorado last year.

A total of 1,390 people have been put to death in Virginia, with the first documented execution being a Spanish spy in the Jamestown colony in 1608, according to NBC News. Since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, Virginia has executed 113 people, second only to Texas. However, Virginia has only two men on death row and not a single jury in Virginia has imposed a death sentence since 2011.

Virginia is one of four commonwealths in the United States—the other three are Massachusetts, Kentucky and Pennsylvania. What is the difference between a state and a commonwealth? Nothing, according Merriam-Webster Dictionary the term commonwealth was preferred over state by a number of political writers in the years leading up to 1780.

Regardless of their designation, the four commonwealths seem to be in step when it comes to disdain for capital punishment.

The last public execution in the United States was carried out in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. On August 14, 1936, it was reported that nearly 20,000 people crowded around the gallows in Owensboro to witness the execution of Rainey Bethea. He was convicted of the rape and murder of a 70-year-old woman.
            The murder was committed on June 7, 1936. Bethea pleaded guilty, was sentenced and his appeals were disposed of by August 5, 1936. He was executed a little more than a week later.    The Commonwealth was portrayed in a less than favorable light by the throng of media that descended on Owensboro for the hanging. The Kentucky legislature, embarrassed by the unfavorable attention, moved to abolish public executions.

            Today in Kentucky the death penalty is rarely imposed and only one person has been executed in the commonwealth in the 21st century.

The last executions in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts were gangsters Philip Belino and Edward Gertson on May 9, 1947.

After going 35 years without an execution, Massachusetts voters approved, by a whopping majority, a constitutional amendment providing that no constitutional provision shall be construed as prohibiting the death penalty.

Nevertheless, the commonwealth’s capital punishment statute was struck down in 1984 as a violation of due process. The state legislature passed a statute to reinstate capital punishment in 1986 but it was vetoed by then-governor Michael Dukakis, who became the Democratic nominee for president in 1988.

Since 1999, the governors of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania have signed approximately 205 execution warrants without a single execution, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

There have been three executions in Pennsylvania since 1978. All three—Keith Zettlemoyer and Leon Moser in 1995; and Gary Heidnik in 1999—waived their appeal rights and volunteered to be executed.
            Three-hundred forty-eight men and two women were executed in the state's electric chair between 1915 and April 2, 1962, when Elmo Smith was executed for the rape and murder of a young girl. Smith was also the last person involuntarily executed in Pennsylvania.

The current governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Tom Wolf, has imposed a moratorium on executions. Although there are approximately 142 inmates on death row, don’t expect an execution in Pennsylvania any time soon.

(Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner’s Toll, 2010 was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino)

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Federal government clears way to execute by firing squads, poison gas, hanging and electrocution

The US Department of Justice quietly amended its execution protocols, dropping the requirement to carry out federal death sentences by lethal injection and clearing the way to use other methods, including firing squads, poison gas, hanging and electrocution, reported Jurist. The amended rule, published in the Federal Register, specifically allows the US government to conduct executions by lethal injection or use “any other manner prescribed by the law of the state in which the sentence was imposed.”

Several states allow alternative methods of execution, including electrocution, nitrogen gas inhalation, or death by firing squad. Currently, nine states permit execution by electrocution, seven by lethal gas, three by hanging, and three by firing squad. Federal law still stipulates that the execution manner must correspond with what the state where the execution takes place permits. If a state does not permit the death penalty in the jurisdiction a defendant is convicted, a judge can designate a different state to carry out the execution under the authority of the federal government.

Previously, executions by the federal government only occurred in federal penitentiaries. However, the new rule change also allows for state facilities to carry out executions.

The federal government carried out its first execution in 17 years in July. Currently, five people are scheduled for execution before President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in, and the recently promulgated rules cannot go into effect until December 24, 2020. Most political experts believe the new rules will be short-lived as Biden is opposed to the death penalty and has vowed to eliminate it on the federal level.

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Tennessee executes convicted killer by electric chair

The 4th Execution of 2020

Tennessee executed death row inmate Nicholas Todd Sutton in the electric chair Thursday night, marking the fifth time the state has used the method since 2018, reported The Tennessean.

Sutton, 58, was pronounced dead at 7:26 p.m. CST, according to the Tennessee Department of Correction.

He was 18 years old when he killed his grandmother Dorothy Sutton, his high school friend John Large and another man, Charles Almon. Sutton didn't receive a death sentence until he fatally stabbed fellow inmate Carl Estep six years later, in 1985.

When the curtain to the death chamber opened Thursday, Sutton looked forward with a solemn expression and made eye contact with media witnesses on the other side of the glass. 

Asked by the prison warden if he had any last words, Sutton spoke at length about his Christian faith. He thanked his wife, his family and "many friends for their love and support as they tried so very hard to save my life."

He spoke about the "power of Jesus Christ to take impossible situations and correct them."

“I’m just grateful to be a servant of God, and I’m looking forward to being in his presence,” Sutton said. "And I thank you."

Nicholas Sutton's last words: 'I’m just grateful to be a servant of God'

A prison chaplain and Sutton's spiritual adviser had served him communion — Welch's grape juice and a wafer — at 3:30 p.m., just before he ate his last meal.

Seated in the electric chair, Sutton closed his eyes as prison officials doused sponges attached to his body with saline solution. Salt water ran down his face before a pair of officers draped a shroud over his head, which had been shaved hours earlier.

Then his body lifted up as jolts of electrocution twice coursed through his body.
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Tennessee executes legally blind inmate by electric chair for 1991 killing

The 21st Execution of 2019

Tennessee executed death row inmate Lee Hall in the electric chair on December 5, 2019, marking the fourth time the state has used the method since 2018, reported The Tennessian.

Hall, 53, was pronounced dead at 7:26 p.m. CST, according to the Tennessee Department of Correction. Media witnesses described what appeared to be a faint trail of white smoke rising from Hall's headeach time the lethal current coursed through his body.

One witness described seeing what appeared to be a drop of blood on Hall's white shirt as the second current was applied. 

Hall, also known as Leroy Hall Jr., was sentenced to death for killing his ex-girlfriend Traci Crozier in 1991. He was found guilty of first-degree murder and aggravated arson by a Hamilton County jury in 1992.

Hall was the 138th person put to death in Tennessee since 1916, and the sixth inmate executed since the state resumed capital punishment in August 2018. Hall also is believed to be only the second legally blind death row inmate executed since the U.S. reinstated the death penalty in 1976.

Tennessee was originally set to execute Hall in April 1998, and again in 2016. Legal delays blocked those dates, but the courts and Gov. Bill Lee refused to intervene this time.

Executions have become a grim routine in Tennessee since the state resumed them in 2018.

Much of Hall's execution matched others that preceded his, according to the six media witnesses. But the smoke they described was unusual. Federal public defender Kelley Henry said it was evidence of torture.

Henry represents many death row inmates and has witnessed an electrocution in Tennessee. She said the smoke could be a sign that the execution team did not douse Hall with enough saline solution, which is used to conduct electricity, or that the sponge strapped to his head had melted.

Department of Correction spokesperson Dorinda Carter, who witnessed Hall's execution, said the vapor was "a small amount of steam, not smoke, which is a natural function of the combination of solution and heat.

In an emailed statement, Carter said the execution "went as designed without any complications."

Tennessee has used the electric chair to execute four death row inmates, including Hall, since 2018. None of the witnesses at the other three executions reported seeing smoke or steam.

Before he died, Hall struck a conciliatory tone with his last words.

"I think people can learn forgiveness and love and make the world a better place. That's all I have to say," Hall said. 

After the execution, Crozier's sister Staci Wooten said 28 years of pain had ended for her family.

“Our family’s peace can begin, but another family’s hell has to begin,” she said, reading

Hall released his own statement apologizing to Crozier's family. His attorney John Spragens shared it after the execution.

“I’m sorry for the pain I caused," Hall's statement read. “I ask for your forgiveness, and I hope and pray that someday you can find it in your heart to forgive me."

Hall also apologized to his family, including his brother David who attended the execution.

"I hope this brings peace," Hall's statement read. "I don't want them to worry about me anymore."

A month ago, David Hall sat in a Chattanooga courtroom while his brother's attorneys spun out the late plea for a new trial, hoping to delay the execution to allow the case to be heard.

On Thursday, David Hall sat stoic in the front row of the viewing room, holding a tissue as his brother said his last words and was put to death. 

rn his conviction and block the execution, saying a juror in his 1992 trial was unfairly biased against him.

Defense attorneys in new filings requested to vacate the original conviction on Oct. 14, just a month and a half before Hall's execution. 

An unnamed female juror from Hall's original trial said her own history of violent rape and abuse at the hands of her first husband prejudiced her against Hall. She had not described her history of abuse during jury selection — it came to light for the first time in September.

Attorneys requested Hall's original case be reopened as part of a post-conviction relief appeal, which could have delayed the execution.

Courts rejected that argument. The U.S. Supreme Court issued a two-sentence order Thursday night declining to step in.

In a statement Wednesday, the governor said the case had been fully and fairly litigated for nearly 30 years.

“The judgment and sentence stand based on these rulings, and I will not intervene in this case," Lee said Wednesday afternoon.

Hall's death part of a trend in Tennessee, but not the nation

Tennessee is an outlier in the nation, carrying out executions at a steady clip since 2018 despite the fact that most states have backed away from the practice.

Hall's choice to die by electrocution is another sign that Tennessee is bucking a national trend — no other state has used the electric chair since 2013.

Hall was one of dozens of inmates who challenged the state's controversial lethal injection method in court, saying it caused unconstitutional torture.

Hall is now the fourth inmate to choose the electric chair over lethal injection, which is the state's default execution method.

Lethal injections take several minutes. Electrocutions are quick by comparison.

Inmates are strapped into the chair with crisscrossing belts. Their arms are bound to the chair, and their legs are wrapped in sponges and shackled.

The execution team douses the inmate in water and places a sponge, helmet and shroud over their head. 

The chair delivers two cycles of electric jolts — 20 seconds of 1,750 volts, a 15-second gap and then 15 more seconds of electricity.

The horror of Hall's crime has remained prominent as state and federal courts weighed the latest wave of legal questions. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals described Crozier's death in visceral detail in an order Wednesday. 

Hall, then 24, and Crozier, 22, had lived together for five years before she moved in with her aunt the month before her death.

On the night of April 16, 1991, Hall threw a "jug full of gasoline that Hall lit with a paper-towel fuse" into her car, the court's order read. She suffered burns over 95% of her body and died hours later.

Emergency room doctors at Erlanger Hospital in Chattanooga said she had the worst injuries they'd ever seen.

Hall initially denied involvement in the fatal fire but then told police that he intended only to destroy the car, not to kill Crozier. His family reiterated that account in a statement released after the execution.

Hall later told police he made the homemade gas bomb as protection from her uncle but threw it at Crozier after she laughed at him and refused to reconcile their relationship. Hall also left threatening messages for Crozier ahead of the murder.

Wooten, Crozier's sister, told reporters that Hall was often abusive to Crozier and the rest of their family after the pair met in high school.

To Wooten, the only way justice could come for her sister was with the death sentence carried out. 

"He's nothing to me," Wooten said in a recent interview. "I just want him dead, and then I'll be a happy person."

Traci Crozier's father, Gene Crozier, said in a recent interview his daughter got along with everyone.

"She was just a free spirit," he said. "She never missed a day of class."

Every day since her death, Traci Crozier's family has mourned her loss. They have hoped the execution would provide relief from overwhelming grief.

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Tennessee uses electric chair to execute Stephen West on death row for 32 years

The 11th Execution of 2019
Tennessee executed its third inmate in the electric chair since November on August 14, 2019 for stabbing a mother and her 15-year-old daughter to death in 1986, reported the Associated Press.

State officials pronounced 56-year-old Stephen West dead at 7:27 p.m. at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.

This week, West decided he preferred to die in the electric chair after previously voicing no preference, which would have defaulted him to lethal injection. His attorney in a court filing wrote that the electric chair is “also unconstitutional, yet still less painful” compared with the state’s preference of a three-drug lethal injection.

Attorneys for inmates David Miller and Edmund Zagorski made the same arguments before they chose to die by the electric chair in 2018. Both unsuccessfully argued to courts that Tennessee’s procedure, which uses the drug midazolam, results in a prolonged and torturous death.

Tennessee has put three inmates to death by lethal injection since August 2018.

In Tennessee, condemned inmates whose crimes occurred before 1999 can opt for the electric chair.

West’s attorney has argued that some “feasible and readily implemented alternative methods of execution exist that significantly reduce the substantial risk of severe pain and suffering” compared with the state’s three-drug protocol or electrocution: a single bullet to the back of the head, a firing squad, a “euthanasia oral cocktail” or one-drug pentobarbital, according to a February court filing.

West was one of four death row inmates who sued last year, asking a federal court’s permission to use a firing squad as an execution method. Currently, just three states — Mississippi, Oklahoma and Utah — continue to allow the use of firing squads. However, the last time that method was used was in 2010.

The last state other than Tennessee to carry out an execution by electrocution was Virginia in 2013, according to Death Penalty Information Center data.

West was found guilty of the kidnapping and stabbing deaths of 51-year-old Wanda Romines and her 15-year-old daughter, Sheila Romines. He also was convicted of the teenager’s rape.

In a clemency plea to Gov. Bill Lee, attorneys for West wrote that his then-17-year-old accomplice Ronnie Martin actually killed both Union County victims. West was 23 at the time. Their cases were separated, and while West was sentenced to death, Martin pleaded guilty as a juvenile and received a life sentence with the possibility of parole in 2030.

In a court filing, the state said West brutally stabbed the victims to death. An expert at West’s trial concluded two people were involved in stabbing the teen.

Regardless of the arguments about who killed the women, Tennessee is one of 27 states that allow executions of “non-triggermen” convicted of involvement in a felony resulting in a victim’s death, even if they didn’t kill anyone themselves, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

West’s clemency filing says the jury never heard a jail recording from Martin saying he carried out the killings, not West. But a 1989 state Supreme Court opinion rejected the recording as uncorroborated hearsay that wouldn’t have exonerated West.

West’s attorney opted against playing the tape at sentencing because the judge would have allowed other recordings in which Martin incriminated West, court records show.

The governor denied West’s clemency application, which also said West had been taking powerful medication in prison to treat mental illness.

West’s attorneys also said the jury didn’t hear about his abusive upbringing because his parents paid for his lead lawyer. They wrote that the abuse created conditions that made West freeze in response to traumatic events.

Another Tennessee execution is scheduled in December.

Charles Walton Wright had been scheduled to be put to death in October, but died in prison in May.

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Tennessee sends second inmate to the electric chair in about a month

The 23rd Execution in 2018

A Tennessee inmate became the second person to die in the state's electric chair in just over a month on December 6, 2018, nearly two decades after Tennessee adopted lethal injection as its preferred method of execution, reported The Associated Press.

David Earl Miller, 61, was pronounced dead at 7:25 p.m. at a Nashville maximum-security prison.

Miller was convicted of killing 23-year-old Lee Standifer in 1981 in Knoxville and had been on death row for 36 years, the longest of any inmate in Tennessee.

At 7:12 p.m. and after Miller had been strapped into the chair, Tennessee Department of Correction officials raised a blind that had covered the windows to a witness room. Miller looked straight ahead, his eyes seemingly unfocused and his face expressionless.

Warden Tony Mays asked Miller if he had any last words. He spoke but his words were unintelligible. Mays asked him to repeat himself, and his words were still difficult to understand, but his attorney, Stephen Kissinger, said he understood them to be, "Beats being on death row."

Officers then placed a large damp sponge on Miller's shaved head to help conduct the current before strapping a cap to his head. Water ran down Miller's face and was toweled off by an officer. Miller looked down and did not look back up before officers placed a shroud over his face.

After someone connected an electrical cable to the chair, Miller's body stiffened as the first jolt of current hit him. His body then relaxed before a second jolt came less than a minute later. Again, Miller's body stiffened and then relaxed. The blinds were pulled down and an announcement of the time of death came over an intercom.

No witnesses from either Miller's family or Standifer's were present for the execution, but Department of Correction spokeswoman Neysa Taylor read a brief statement from a woman from Ohio who did not want her name given.

Taylor read, "After a long line of victims he has left, it is time to be done. It is time for him to pay for what he has done to Lee."

Miller had been on a date with Standifer, who had mental disabilities, and the two were seen together around town the evening of May 20, 1981. The young woman's body was found beaten and stabbed the next day in the yard of the home where Miller had been living.

Gov. Bill Haslam refused Miller's request to commute his sentence to life in prison. Miller's petition for clemency said Miller had been physically abused as a child by his stepfather and had been physically and sexually abused by his mother. The petition argued that evidence of the trauma and mental illness it caused should have been presented to a jury.

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Tennessee executes killer by electric chair

The 20th Execution of 2018

Tennessee Death row inmate Edmund Zagorski died at 7:26 p.m. CDT Thursday after prison officials electrocuted him with the electric chair, reported the Tennessean.  

He is the 134th person put to death by Tennessee since 1916 and the second person this year after Billy Ray Irick’s execution by lethal injection on Aug. 9. He is the first person to die by electric chair since Daryl Horton's execution in 2007.

Zagorski, 63, was convicted in the April 1983 murders of John Dale Dotson, of Hickman County, and Jimmy Porter, of Dickson. Prosecutors argued Zagorski lured them into the woods in Robertson County with the promise to sell them marijuana, and then he shot them, slit their throats and stole their money.

Two minutes before it was set to begin at 7 p.m., the U.S. Supreme Court denied Zagorski's appeal on the grounds of the unconstitutionality of choosing between the electric chair and lethal injection. 

As dark clouds loomed over Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville and the sunset changed the sky from bright pink to black, a police-escorted van arrived.

Eight people believed to be family members of the victims entered the prison to witness the execution.

They waited in front of a covered large window that looked into the execution chamber where on the other side of the glass Zagorski sat pinned in the electric chair, held down by buckles and straps with electrodes fastened to his feet.

The blinds opened for the rest of the witnesses to see Zagorski dressed in his cotton clothes, smiling and grimacing to the group.

Zagorski pronounced his last words: "Let’s rock."

He sat smiling in the wired chair as prison staff placed a wet sponge, which had been soaked in salt, and a metal helmet on his freshly shaven head.

Zagorski raised his eyebrows, appearing to be communicating with his attorney Kelley Henry. She sat while nodding and tapping her heart, looking at Zagorski.

“I told him, when I put my hand over my heart, that was me holding him in my heart,” Henry told The Tennessean. She said Zagorski smiled, to encourage her to smile back. 

Then his face was covered with a black shroud.

The warden gave the signal to proceed. Zagorski lifted his right hand several times in what looked like attempts to wave, before he clenched his hands into a fist as the first current ran 1,750 volts of electricity through his body for 20 seconds.

There was a short pause before the second jolt was administered for 15 seconds.

The doctor overseeing the death appeared in view to check on Zagorski’s vitals.

Zagorski was dead. The blinds into the chamber closed.

Ten minutes later, the victims' families exited the building and drove away in the van without speaking publicly.

"The death of Edmund Zagorski was carried out by means of electrocution on Nov. 1, 2018," Neysa Taylor, director of communications for the Tennessee Department of Correction, said in a press conference.

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Tennessee to use electric chair tonight on condemned killer

Weeks after choosing the electric chair over lethal injection, a Tennessee death row inmate would be the second person in the state to be executed that way in nearly six decades, reported CNN.

Edmund Zagorski, 63, was sentenced to death for the 1984 murders of two men. His execution is scheduled for Thursday at 7 p.m.

He requested electrocution on the eve of his original execution date in early October because the state uses a controversial drug in lethal injections.Zagorski's attorneys argued the lethal injection would make him spend the last 10 to 18 minutes of his life in "utter terror and agony" while the electric chair would only cause him "excruciating pain for (likely) 15-30 seconds," court documents show.

Despite the decision, Zagorski's attorneys said he was forced into a "terrible choice," arguing that electrocution though "relatively fast" is also "dreadful and grim."The legal battle over his execution continues.

Zagorski's attorney, Paul Bottei, said he is still asking the US Supreme Court on Wednesday to delay the execution.The nation's high court declined to hear Zagorski's case in early October.

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A brief U.S. history of the rise and fall of various execution methods

Over the past 100 years, states have sought the most humane execution methods, each supposedly “guaranteed” to eliminate the gruesome errors of previous uncivilized methods, reported the Washington Post. At the beginning of the 19th century, hanging was the universally accepted execution method.

Around the turn of the 20th century, the electric chair was introduced and quickly spread, thanks to the Gerry Commission (named after its chairman, Elbridge Gerry, grandson of the early Massachusetts governor who bequeathed the gerrymander to American politics). The Gerry Commission reviewed and rejected all known execution methods as barbaric and uncivilized — except the brand-new electric chair, then guaranteed to kill the inmate “in the ten-thousandth part of a second.” Thomas Edison vouched for this, the courts went along, and electrocution was soon the main method of state killing. 

In 1924, Nevada adopted the gas chamber. Few other states joined in, partly because of the association with Nazi extermination camps, and partly because it was so difficult to seal the deadly gas within the chamber or to vent it safely after the prisoner was dead.

In 1982, Texas was the first to use lethal injection when it executed Charles Brooks Jr. Lethal injection thus became the most recent in a series of “institutional fads.” As you can see in the chart above, since the decline of hanging, no method of execution has remained popular for long.

In 1977, Oklahoma developed the three-drug protocol that most states quickly adopted. Jay Chapman, the Oklahoma state medical examiner at the time, designed the procedure to improve on what he had seen occur during use of the electric chair. 

In writing the laws for that procedure, state Sen. Bill Dawson and Rep. Bill Wiseman had little or no consultations with doctors or scientists. The protocol was never subjected to any serious testing or evaluation. They didn’t consider any of the available evidence assessing the risks of lethal injection. The law left all critical decisions to the prison officials in charge of the execution, who often have little medical training or experience. And even the best procedures can go wrong if carried out by inexperienced, stressed and untrained personnel.

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Mississippi brings back electric chair and gas chamber

The Mississippi Senate voted in favor  of adding more ways to carry out the death penalty, reported Jurist. House Bill 638 , which passed in the Mississippi House of Representatives on February 8, would expand Mississippi's methods of execution to include firing squad, gas chamber and electrocution in case the courts rule lethal injection unconstitutional. The Senate rejected the firing squad option but retained the options of gas chamber and electrocution. The amended bill has been sent back to the House.

The death penalty has been a pressing issue across the country. Last month the Supreme Court denied review in a death penalty case. A week earlier the Supreme Court ruled  in favor of a death row inmate over racial bias. Also in February a judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio refused to lift  a preliminary injunction that delays executions in Ohio. In January Judge Michael Merz rejected  Ohio's lethal injection protocol by deeming it unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment. Also in January the US Supreme Court refused  to consider a challenge to Alabama's death penalty system. In December a report by the Death Penalty Information Center found that the use of capital punishment in the US is at a 20-year low.

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'Death Row Marv' has bizarre and twisted impact on death penalty

“Death Row Marv” is a battery-powered toy electric chair that produces an electric buzzing sound with Marv’s eyes glowing red under a helmet attached to electrodes. After his “electrocution,” Marv asks, “That the best you can do, you pansies?”

Because the toy was on display in District Attorney Layla Zon’s office, it now figures prominently in a recently filed court motion that seeks to overturn a Newton County death sentence, reported the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

The motion contends Zon is “pathologically enthralled” with the death penalty and has pursued it with a fervor and zeal unmatched by any other district attorney in the state. Zon is DA of the Alcovy Judicial Circuit, which consists of Walton and Newton counties.

On Wednesday, Zon said she seeks the death penalty only in cases that warrant it. As for “Death Row Marv,” it was already in her office when she became district attorney in 2010 and she recently removed it.

“It was not something I purchased to decorate my office,” she said. “It was a left-behind trinket that became part of the woodwork. … I never sat and looked and fixated on it, like it was part of some medieval mindset.”

Marv was a fictional character created by comic book legend Frank Miller for the “Sin City” graphic novel series. Actor Mickey Rourke portrayed Marv in a 2005 movie adaptation. In “The Hard Goodbye,” Marv is sentenced to die in the electric chair and survives the first jolt — prompting the “you pansies” retort. His executioners then pull the switch again to finish the job.

The toy did not define her philosophy on capital punishment, Zon said. “But when the evidence and the law are not on their side, they launch ad hominem attacks.”

State capital defender Josh Moore, who filed the motion on behalf of condemned inmate Rodney Young, declined to comment. In 2012, Young was condemned to die by lethal injection for killing his ex-fiancée’s son.

An estimated 1,400 murder cases that were eligible for the death penalty have been closed statewide since Zon took office and fewer than 1 percent of them resulted in death sentences, the motion said. Young’s case was “considerably less aggravated” than the other death cases, the motion said, but his crime occurred in Newton County, where Zon turned down his offer to plead guilty in exchange for a sentence of life in prison without parole.

Since 2011, there have been 13 death-penalty trials statewide and four of them took place in Newton County, the motion said. During that same time frame, Georgia juries imposed five death sentences and two of them came from Newton.

“These statistics resoundingly confirm what Ms. Zon’s toy electric chair perhaps only suggests: that her fixation with the death penalty is completely out of step with the sensibilities and evolving standards of decency in this state,” the motion said.

The motion notes that the Georgia Supreme Court in 2001 found that death by electrocution caused excruciating pain with a certainty of “cooked brains and blistered bodies.”

“The idea of any elected state official memorializing such a barbaric (and unconstitutional) practice with an office ornament would be surprising and troubling,” the motion said. “The fact that the elected official at issue here is a constitutional officer entrusted with virtually unfettered discretion in deciding which defendants under her jurisdiction will be singled out for execution, and which will be spared, is cause for real concern.”

Zon said she now wishes she had “trashed” the toy when she first saw it.

As for the two death sentences she obtained, Zon said, jurors from both trials unanimously agreed the ultimate punishment was necessary. And the case involving Young was particularly heinous, she said.

Young killed Gary Lamar Jones because his mother had ended her relationship with Young, Zon said. On a Sunday in March 2008, Jones returned home from church and was overtaken by Young, who tied him to a chair.

Young bludgeoned Jones with a hammer, sliced open his throat with a knife and beat him so viciously he was found dead with an eyeball hanging out of his face, Zon said. “I think if confronted with those same facts, DAs in other counties would have sought death too.”

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Virginia Senate votes to use electric chair in lieu of lethal injection

This week the Virginia state Senate approved a bill making the electric chair the default method of execution if lethal injection drugs are unavailable, reported Reuters.

The bill passed the Republican-controlled Senate by a 22-17 vote. The Republican-dominated House has already approved the measure.

After a lower chamber vote on a minor amendment, the measure will go to Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe for approval. A spokesman for the governor said the measure would be reviewed when it arrived.

Virginia is one of eight states that allows electrocution as a method of execution, letting condemned inmates choose between it and lethal injection. If they do not choose, lethal injection is used.

Virginia, along with other states, has struggled to get lethal injection drugs because pharmaceutical companies have protested their use in executions.

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Alabama House opts for the electric chair

The  Alabama House of Representatives voted to keep execution drug suppliers' names secret and to bring back the use of the electric chair when chemicals for lethal injection are not available, reported Jurist. The members of the House added the drug suppliers secrecy section to a bill that is currently under debate.
The bill would allow the use of the electric chair in the state whenever the state is unable to acquire lethal injection drugs or if the execution method is deemed unconstitutional. Representative Lynn Greer said that Alabama and other states are having issues acquiring the drugs because pharmacies fear lawsuits from death penalty opponents. However, there was some opposition to the provision, as representative Chris England stated that drug purchases are public record and the state has no authority to hide this information from the public.
The members passed the bill by a vote of 76-26, sending it now to the Alabama Senate.
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Tennessee inmates seek to prevent use of electric chair

Ten death row inmates in Tennessee were permitted by a judge to amend pending lawsuits to include a challenge to the use of the electric chair, reported the Associated Press.
The general assembly passed a law earlier this year allowing prisoners to be electrocuted if Tennessee Department of Correction officials were unable to obtain the drug used for lethal injection.
Prior to that, prisoners could not be forced to die by the electric chair, although they were allowed to choose that method under some circumstances.
The death row plaintiffs claim the new law violates both the US and Tennessee constitutions. Among other things, they claim it violates evolving standards of decency. They also claim that the law is too vague. And they question whether the state’s electric chair actually operates as it is supposed to.
Davidson County chancellor Claudia Bonnyman ruled recently that the inmates could amend their lawsuit to include the new claims. The original lawsuit challenged the state’s new lethal injection protocol, adopted in September 2013. It switched execution from the use of three drugs to just one, pentobarbital.
The switch was a response to legal challenges over the effectiveness of the three-drug mixture and a nationwide shortage of one of them, sodium thiopental. Those issues have effectively prevented any executions in Tennessee for nearly five years.
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The Crime Report: What’s the Matter With the Death Penalty?

Matthew T. Mangino
The Crime Report
July 31, 2014
There have been three “botched” executions across the country in the last six months.
On January 16, Dennis McGuire in Ohio gasped for air for some 25 minutes before succumbing to Ohio’s new two-drug lethal injection protocol.
On April 29, during Clayton D. Lockett’s execution in Oklahoma, he “began breathing heavily, writhing on the gurney, clenching his teeth and straining to lift his head off the pillow.” The director of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections halted the execution—Lockett died of a heart attack 43 minutes after the process began.
Just last week in Arizona, the execution of Joseph R. Wood, III began at 1:57 p.m. and he was pronounced dead at 3:49 p.m. The execution did not go as planned.
“I’ve witnessed a number of executions before and I’ve never seen anything like this,” Dale Baich, one of Wood’s attorneys, told The Washington Post. “Nor has an execution that I observed taken this long.”
Stephanie Grisham, spokeswoman for the Arizona attorney general’s office took a contrary position. “I’m telling you he was snoring,” she told  the Arizona Republic. “There was no gasping or snorting. Nothing. He looked like he was asleep.”
Even those witnessing the execution couldn’t agree on what happened.
One thing for sure: the three executions described here were not what Americans have come to expect from lethal injection—the accepted and antiseptic form of state-sponsored death.
Since 2009, when Ohio Governor Ted Strickland stopped Romell Broom’s execution because prison personnel took more than two “painful” hours to search for a suitable vein, executions have been more or less routine, sterile and swift.
Between Broom and McGuire there were 170 lethal injection executions (not to mention two electrocutions and a firing squad) without incident.  All of those executions were uneventful and swift.   For some, it was too swift and too easy.
In researching my book “The Executioner’s Toll, 2010,” I found that some of the victims’ families were struck by the ease with which the condemned slipped into a lethal slumber.
“I think the way he went . . ." a family member said as she paused, breaking into tears, "It was too easy for him."
“It was like laying down and going to sleep," said the relative of another murder victim.
Speaking after his daughter’s killer was executed, an angry father put it this way, “I wish my daughter could have died the way he died today. Wasn't no pain.”
What is different today than in 2010?
As states scrambled to obtain increasingly scare execution drugs, new compounds were being used in new combinations. Within two months of Broom’s failed execution in Ohio, the state carried out a single-drug execution using sodium thiopental.
Prior to Broom, every state used a similar lethal three-drug cocktail to carry out executions. But, in 2010, Oklahoma changed the drugs in its execution protocol to include midazolam; in 2011 Ohio switched to a single dose of pentobarbital; in 2013 Florida changed the drugs in its three drug protocol; in 2014 Ohio switched to a two-drug protocol to include midazolam; this year Arizona switched its protocol to include midazolam.
Lethal injection has been around since 1982, when Texas first used the method touted as the most humane way to carry out an execution.  The U.S. Supreme Court agreed.  In 2008, the Supreme Court decided in Baze v. Rees. The opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts ruled that lethal injection was humane and constitutional.
However, Justice John Paul Stevens made an interesting observation in a concurring opinion in Baze. “I am now convinced,” he wrote, “that this case will generate debate not only about the constitutionality of the three-drug protocol, and specifically about the justification for the use of the paralytic agent, pancuronium bromide, but also about the justification for the death penalty itself.”
The paralytic agent was added to the original three drug protocol not because it made the execution more humane for the condemned offender, but because it made the execution more tolerable for witnesses.
State officials did not want the inmate to squirm, gyrate and writhe during the process—offending the sensibilities of those observing.
Should states be concerned with those sensibilities?
Just before Woods’ execution in Arizona, U.S. 9th Circuit Court Chief Judge Alex Kozinski dissented to an order halting his execution.  He wrote: "Using drugs meant for individuals with medical needs to carry out executions is a misguided effort to mask the brutality of executions by making them look serene and beautiful—like something any one of us might experience in our final moments."
And he added:  “Executions are, in fact, brutal, savage events, and nothing the state tries to do can mask that reality.”
Kosinski told the Los Angeles Times he would scrap lethal injection for other forms of execution.
"I personally think we should go to the guillotine, but shooting is probably the right way to go.”
The guillotine was quick and "pretty much foolproof," he said, but probably would not be accepted by the public. A firing squad would be "messy but effective."
The guillotine has never been used in the U.S. in a state sanctioned execution. However, the firing squad is not that far-fetched. Ronnie Lee Gardner was executed by firing squad in Utah in 2010.  In fact, Deborah W. Denno, a law professor at Fordham University and an expert on the death penalty told the New York Times the most humane way to carry out the death penalty is through the use of a firing squad.
Denno said the firing squad is quick, effective and affordable.
”It’s the most humane procedure,” he  said.
Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney ruled in Jones v. Chappell that California's death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment, reported the Los Angles Times. The state’s death penalty, he held, is arbitrary and no longer serves the purposes of deterrence and retribution because of systemic delays.
Has the death penalty come full circle?
In Furman v. Georgia, the 1972 decision that struck down the death penalty, Justice Potter Stewart wrote: "These death sentences are cruel and unusual in the same way that being struck by lightning is cruel and unusual.”
Justice Potter further noted, “I simply conclude that the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments cannot tolerate the infliction of a sentence of death under legal systems that permit this unique penalty to be so wantonly and so freakishly imposed."
Carrying out an execution today is as freakishly arbitrary as imposing the death penalty was in 1972.  There are about 742 inmates on California’s death row, a state that has not carried out an execution in more than eight years.
If one of those inmates is suddenly scheduled for execution—wouldn’t that be a lot like being struck by lightning?
 
Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner’s Toll, 2010 was recently released by McFarland & Company. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino

Tennessee brings back the electric chair

Tennessee has decided how it will respond to a nationwide scarcity of lethal injection drugs for death-row inmates: with the electric chair. Gov. Bill Haslam signed a bill into law last week allowing the state to electrocute death row inmates in the event prisons are unable to obtain the drugs, which have become more and more scarce following a European-led boycott of drug sales for executions.
Tennessee lawmakers overwhelmingly passed the electric chair legislation in April, with the Senate voting 23-3 and the House 68-13 in favor of the bill.
Richard Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said Tennessee is the first state to enact a law to reintroduce the electric chair without giving prisoners an option.
"There are states that allow inmates to choose, but it is a very different matter for a state to impose a method like electrocution," he said. "No other state has gone so far."
Dieter said he expects legal challenges to arise if the state decides to go through with an electrocution, both on the grounds of whether the state could prove that lethal injection drugs were not obtainable and constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment.
The Supreme Court has never declared a method of execution unconstitutional on the grounds that it is cruel and unusual. It upheld the firing squad in 1879, the electric chair in 1890 and lethal injection in 2008.
The court made it clear over the years that the Eighth Amendment prohibits inflicting pain merely to torture or punish an inmate, drawing a distinction between a method like electrocution and old European practices such as drawing and quartering. The Constitution prohibits "unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain," the court said in 1976.
Nonetheless, U.S. states and the federal government have updated execution methods several times in efforts to find more humane ways to put condemned criminals to death.
First used by New York State in 1890, the electric chair was employed throughout the 20th century to execute hundreds and is still an option in eight states. Since 1976, 158 inmates have been executed by electrocution. It was considered humane when it was first introduced but has resulted in many horrific executions over the years.
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Arkansas AG candidate calls for return of electric chair

The four candidates running for Arkansas attorney general agree they want to resume executions that have been halted for nearly a decade by court challenges and shortages of the drugs used for lethal injections.
However, one candidate, David Sterling, said he thinks the state should look to electrocution to carry out the death penalty while the state's lethal injection law remains in limbo. Sterling is running against Leslie Rutledge and Patricia Nation for the GOP nomination. State Rep. Nate Steel is the only Democrat running for the post.
"The electric chair is still authorized to be used in executions in the state of Arkansas. The electric chair has withstood constitutional scrutiny throughout the country for many, many decades. And so with it being available as a method of execution, I'm not sure why we're not employing it," Sterling told The Associated Press last week.
Sterling raised the electric chair as a possibility while he talked about how to restart the state's executions. Arkansas has 33 inmates on death row, but hasn't executed anyone since 2005.
Arkansas hasn't used electrocution to execute anyone since 1990, and the state's electric chair now sits in a museum.
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