South Carolina is keeping it real and firing up the electric chair after an eight year hiatus. Good. I was worried that we were going to leave the chair behind in, oh, say the nineteenth century. But wait, for James Neil Tucker there's a twist.
Tucker didn't actively choose electrocution. He just didn't ask for lethal injection, as he could have under a state law that applies to inmates sent to death row before June 1995. For those condemned after that, injection is automatic.
So you got that? Sentenced after 1995, lethal injection is automatic. Sentenced before 1995, you get to choose between the chair and the needle, but if you do nothing, you get the chair. Why do I get the sense that this schmuck's lawyers were asleep on this one? Or did they just assume that since the last 22 people executed in South Carolina all got lethal injection, that must be the way it's done?
I'm pretty optimistic that capital punishment will disappear within my lifetime. But the debate will always survive in some form or another. What won't survive, however, is the electic chair. Kids will read about it in history books the way they read about burnings at the stake.
Prison officials say they are testing the chair just as they test lethal injection procedures. The execution will be carried out in the same manner as the tests -- an extremely high jolt of current for several seconds, a pause, and a weaker current for about two minutes.
Yeah that sounds real humane. About a half step above strapping someone to a chair and hitting them with a hammer. Like an animal. The article goes on to mention stories about prisoners not dying immediately or being set on fire. It also mentions how Nebraska is the only state in the union to require electrocution as the means of state execution. Way to go Nebraska. First in corn huskin' AND shootin' folks full of electricity. Brother.
South C'lina loves grits and electrocution
Posted by mike at May 25, 2004 09:30 PMshocking!
Posted by: Greg on May 27, 2004 11:13 PM