Executioners

by Phil Clarke

  On the morning of 6 August 1890, the time came for the electric chair’s debut performance. The press and the public waited with baited breath to see how the new device would function upon the doomed Kemmler. Of the twenty-five witnesses invited to watch the proceedings, fourteen of them were doctors, including Alfred Southwick and George Fell, who were there to see their idea put into practice. The man given the responsibility of sending Kemmler to his death was Edwin Davis, who was actually the prison electrician. He had tested the machine on a horse the day before to ascertain what voltage would be suffi­cient to cause the death of the prisoner; 1,000 volts for a duration of seventeen seconds was the verdict.

  Early that summer morning, a suited Kemmler was led from his cell to the death chamber. He appeared quite calm. As Charles Durston, the prison warden, nervously ensured that the straps were in place, Kemmler told him to take his time and not to hurry. Before the hood was lowered over his head, he was asked if he wished to say anything. Kemmler responded by wishing everyone good luck in the world. Durston then moved away from the chair and gave the signal to Davis who pulled the switch, sending the calculated current through Kemmler’s body. The seventeen-second surge of power must have felt like a lifetime for the onlookers as the seated figure strained against his bindings. The body went limp as the power was cut and two physicians, Doctors Edward Charles Spitzka and Charles F. Macdonald, approached the chair to examine the prisoner for signs of life. Unfortunately for all present, they found some. Kemmler’s heart was beating and despite such an ordeal he was still breathing.

  The doctors called for the current to be quickly turned back on. Davis doubled the power to 2,000 volts and allowed the electrocution to continue for a massive seventy seconds. During this extended jolt, Kemmler’s body thrashed and flailed, his blood vessels ruptured, causing his body to catch fire. Many of the spectators fainted or fled the viewing room in disgust. Once more, Spitzka and Macdonald checked for Kemmler’s vitals. It was over – the chair had finally done its job. The ordeal had lasted eight minutes and the chair received mixed reviews. While there was public outcry at the unpleasantness of the proceedings. Witnesses reported an aroma of burnt flesh and the sound of crackling, but there were those who believed it a success. George Fell praised the performance of the prototype, assuring the press that the condemned felt no pain whatsoever. Westinghouse, among others, commented that they would have done better to use an axe. In his eyes, they were no further on from medieval head chopping. Some even said it was worse than hanging – the method it had sought to replace.

  A Jumpy Start

  Despite such an inauspicious start, the electric chair soon became the number one method of capital punishment in the United States. Following a series of successful executions in the spring of 1891, with the deaths of James Slocum, Harris Smiler, Schichiok Jugigo and Joseph Wood at Sing Sing Prison, the technique was successfully pronounced as a clean and progressive successor to the rope. Slight modifica­tions were made, including a thickening of the wires along with an increase in voltage, which seemed to ensure the immediate death of the prisoner.

  However, further problems occurred on 27 July 1893 with the execution of William Taylor. The first jolt of electricity caused his legs to rip through the ankle restraints but failed to kill him. A second charge was called for by the warden, but the burst of power had blown the AC generator, causing an enforced stay of execution. Taylor had to be removed from the chair and kept alive with a cocktail of chloroform and morphine while the generator was repaired and the system made ready for a repeat attempt. An astonish­ing one hour and nine minutes later, the still living body of William Taylor was brought back to the chair for his second surge, which managed to eliminate the faint and final vestiges of life. It seemed that the chair was actually far from humane and a long way from Albert Southwick’s idea of a quick and pain-free death.

  Throughout these early years there were persistent teething troubles with the chair’s performance, how­ever, it seemed to flourish in the face of such failings. Ohio and Massachusetts followed New York’s lead before the close of the century. New Jersey was next in line, approving its use for capital punishment in 1906. The following year, New Jersey built its first death row: a simple design consisting of six cells at one end of the building and a death chamber at the other. The chair was built by a man called Carl F. Adams who ran Adams Electric. His version differed slightly from the one in New York. Instead of a switch for administering the deadly dose of alternating current, the Adams chair used a rheostat dial which could be turned up or down. The New Jersey chair was also built with comfort in mind, incorporating adjustable head and armrests.

  The first to experience the ‘comforts’ of this chair was a thirty-seven-year-old Italian immigrant named Saverio Di Giovanni. The squat and stocky man had been found guilty of shooting and killing a fellow Italian and, after a trial lasting only two days, a jury took a mere fifteen minutes to recommend the death penalty. Di Giovanni spent just one month on the newly constructed death row at Trenton State Prison and made the final walk to the death chamber on 11 December 1907 where, at 5.57 a.m, Edwin Davis acted as legal executioner and turned the dial executing the bound and hooded killer with a sixty-second jolt of 2040 volts.

  Back in New York, the prisons were still having problems administering a swift and smooth execu­tion. In 1903, Frederick Van Wormer was sent to the electric chair at Clinton State Prison and the necessary shocks were applied. However, when the body was being prepared for post mortem examina­tion, it was dis­covered Van Wormer was still breathing! A call to the executioner revealed that he had gone home, and he had to be summoned back to the prison to finish the man off! By the time the state ‘electrocutioner’ arrived, Van Wormer had already died from his half-execution. In what was to be a most grisly and macabre application of the law, Wormer’s corpse was placed back in the chair and electrocuted with 17,000 volts for a full thirty seconds. Such horrors would plague this apparent improvement in capital punishment through­out the twentieth century, yet it continued to be the most popular form of death penalty in America with at least twenty states adopting the procedure.

  The Procedure

  Although the electric chair fried its first victims, the process was continually refined to improve its efficacy as a humane and painless form of capital punishment. Each state that had adopted this form of execution had at least one death chamber in which a chair was kept. Each chair differed slightly from other models in name as well as in design. Yellow Mama was the moniker given to the chair in Alabama owing to the colour it had been painted, thanks to the nearby State Highway Department. Other states christened their chairs ‘Old Sparky’ or ‘Gruesome Gertie’.

  The routine was fairly similar no matter what state you were in. First the prisoner’s head was shaved in anticipation of the electrodes that would connect the condemned to the electricity generator. These electrodes consisted of a 10-centimetre (4-inch) diameter wooden cup containing a 8-centimetre (3-inch) diameter metal plate which was covered in a layer of natural sponge. This sponge was soaked in a saline solution or, in more modern times, treated with a gel known as Electro Crème, which aided the conductivity of the current.

  In the very early days, the condemned was then bound to the chair with leather straps across his ankles, chest and arms, against which the prisoner would strain as the current flowed through his body. However, a prison inmate called Charles Justice, while on cleaning duty, noticed that these leather bindings were a possible root cause of the burning that had sullied previous executions, and suggested that the straps be made of metal instead. This improvement seemed to minimise burning and so the authorities decided to reduce Justice’s punishment, allowing him to be paroled from Ohio State Penitentiary. He gained his freedom thanks to his eye for design, but he was free for only eleven years. He was later convicted of theft and murder and returned to prison where on 9 November 1911, Charles Justice was bound with his own creation and efficiently executed.
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  Thanks to numerous failed attempts to humanely execute prisoners such as Williams Kemmler and Taylor, electrocution usually consisted of multiple shocks. The first jolt of alternating current was between 700 and 2,400 volts, which travelled around the body for anything from fifteen to sixty seconds. Its dual purpose was to induce unconsciousness (believed to take a mere 240th of a second) and to stop the heart. To avoid the sight and smell of burning flesh, the current was minimised to about 6 amperes. Any­thing above this level ran the risk of cooking the body. Once the first shock had coursed through the victim’s body, the power would be cut and an appointed physician would check the prisoner’s vital signs. It was often necessary to apply a second jolt, normally a lower dose for a shorter length of time. An average of only two minutes elapsed from the first flick of the switch to the prisoner’s eventual demise.

  Humane Death?

  The electric chair was certainly a fast method of despatching capital criminals, but what of its humane and painless status? To ascertain whether the volley of volts provided a civilised and constitutionally sound death, the effects of the procedure required study. Along with the destruction of brain cells and the central nervous system, the electric current causes total paralysis. Every muscle in the entire body locks tight in an enforced contraction. This may sound as if the level of pain and suffering experienced by the prisoner is minimal, however, there is much evi­dence to suggest that the electric chair is not quite the compassionate device that the authorities have encouraged people to believe it is.

  The electric current is so potent that the prisoner’s skin begins to turn bright red. It swells and stretches while smoke rises from the electrodes. If the body heat is allowed to rise, it can result in the prisoner bursting into flames, particularly if the seated convict is sweating profusely. It has even been known for a prisoner’s eyeballs to pop out of their sockets with the force of the jolt. To add further insult to fatal injury, the death-row prisoner is forced to wear a nappy, as one of the many unpleasant effects of electrocution includes involuntary defaeca­tion and urination as a result of the bowel and pelvic muscles contracting. Such facts do not paint a merciful picture of the electric chair and considerable doubt must enter the minds of those who have witnessed these termi­nations. Are these condemned men and women cognisant during their ordeal?

  An early confirmation came in 1946 when seventeen-year-old Willie Francis met with Gruesome Gertie – the name given to the electric chair in the state of Louisiana. As the electricity sent his body into convulsions, the attendant witnesses heard him shriek from under­neath the hood, ‘Stop it! Let me breathe!’ Young Francis was quickly removed from the electric chair and it was later revealed that the execution had failed on account of the chair being poorly prepared by a drunken official. This was the first time a prisoner had survived the electric chair and been able to speak about his ordeal. Francis is reported to have admitted to feeling burning at the points where the electrodes were attached to his skin, and he likened the taste in his mouth to that of cold peanut butter. Clearly, the victim was conscious during the electrocution.

  Power Cut

  Such evidence fuelled protests against the electric chair, and as the peace-loving philosophy of the 1960s took hold over the nation, opposition towards the hot seat grew ever stronger. The Adams-built electric chair of New Jersey was quickly retired after its final performance in 1963. Prisoner visits to the death chamber were becoming less frequent. There were forty-two electrocutions in 1961, and this number dropped until 1967, when there were only two deaths at the electric chair throughout the United States.

  A complete cessation of execu­tions followed while the authorities waited for the Supreme Court to decide the electric chair’s fate. The public’s growing abhorrence of the process had to be taken into account and the highest court in the land was forced to examine whether or not electrocution violated constitutionally set human rights. During this time the only active electric chair in the world was in the Philippines, and this was making a name for itself by delivering ‘justice’ to such notorious criminals as the three men found guilty of gang-raping actress Maggie dela Riva. Yet even the chair in Manila became unwanted furniture in 1976.

  In this same year, the Supreme Court of the United States came to a decision regarding two cases: those of Furman and Gregg versus the state of Georgia. In both cases the presiding judges upheld the State’s legal rights to administer the death penalty. This saw a return to capital punishment and the power was returned to electric chairs throughout the country. This second wind began with the execution of John Arthur Spenkelink on 25 May 1979. The resurgence of the chair did not begin well. Controversy surrounded the convicted killer’s death. There were reports that a fight broke out in his cell, resulting in Spenkelink’s neck being broken, thus rendering the electric chair superfluous. Dead or alive, there appeared to be no escape for death-row inmates from the electric chair in its second term of office. How­ever, state after state began to review their association with this form of capital punishment. This rethink saw Texas and Oklahoma among others turn their back on the device in the 1980s in favour of a more efficient, merciful method.

  The Demise

  The 1990s fared no better when it came to instilling public faith in the electric chair. Countless examples of botched executions continued to crop up all over the country, hindering the attempts by many authorities to sustain the life of the deadly ‘harmchair’. Three significant executions acted as nails in the coffin for electrocution as capital punishment, all of which occurred in the state of Florida. The first took place on 4 May 1990. The victim, Jesse Tafero, suffered a fate worse than death when the natural sponge customarily placed between the electrode and the top of the head was replaced with a synthetic one. This caused the current to flow at a mere 100 volts, torturing him instead of humanely terminating the prisoner’s life. Those present witnessed 30-centimetre (12-inch) high orange and blue flames rise from the hood. The power was switched off, allowing the prisoner to take several deep breaths before the current was allowed to flow several times in succes­sion, finally seeing off Tafero. Seven years later, during the execution of Pedro Medina on 25 March 1997, witnesses once again saw the prisoner burst into flames. An enquiry into the affair revealed the fault lay with corroded metal in the helmet. Others believed it was again down to the sponge, which was thought to have been devoid of saline solution. Whatever the reason, the Supreme Court saw noth­ing to deem the practice as cruel or unusual and so the chair was allowed to strike again.

  Two years later, in July 1999, 127 kilogram (20 stone) Allen Lee ‘Tiny’ Davis sat in Old Sparky and was electrocuted by 2,300 volts at 7.10 a.m. The observing press and prison guards saw blood pour from beneath Davis’ hood, covering the front of his white shirt.

  The prison officials blamed the blood on a simple nosebleed, popular thought suggested that the helmet housing the electrode was poorly fitted to the prisoner’s head. Once more the Supreme Court was forced to decide whether the method was unconstitu­tional. Despite evidence to suggest that Old Sparky had faulty components, the attendant justices voted four to three in favour of the Floridian chair. It lived to fry another day, but the confidence in this method of judicially appointed death had disappeared.

  Louisiana ended its affair with Gruesome Gertie in 1991. She had performed a total of eighty-seven executions since her creation. Kentucky and Tennessee soon followed suit, retiring their chairs in 1998 and turning to lethal injection as their preferred method of execution. With the exception of Nebraska, which still uses the electric chair as its sole method of execution, the remaining states in which electrocution is still practised do so only if the prisoner prefers the spark over the syringe. The last time the chair was used as a compulsory means for killing was on 10 May 2002 upon cop killer Lynda Lyon Block, in the southern state of Alabama. Dressed in a white prison outfit she gave no final words before Yellow Mama gave her two jolts, bringing an end to her life.

  At
the time of writing, the final execution to take place in the United States upon the electric chair was that of forty-five-year-old Daryl Holton, who chose to wear the electrodes on 12 September 2007. His life was extinguished after two surges of 1,750 volts. Block and Holton were two of only ten victims that went to the chair during the twenty-first century. The few remaining electric chairs now await their own death sentence, and with them the practice which saw to the executions of almost 4,500 men and women in little over a century.

  PART TEN: THE GAS CHAMBER

  The Creation – The Idea

  As the twentieth century got underway, capital punish­­ment in the United States was rapidly chang­ing. The changes stemmed from an abhorrence to the noose, which had been in use since the early settlers set foot on American soil. Hanging was seen as behind the times for a far more civilised society and creative individuals began to look beyond the rope for a suitable alternative. As we have seen, electrocution proved to be a viable alternative to hanging in such states as New York, Ohio and Florida. However, Edison had failed to persuade the authorities in the major western states to go electric. Despite the growing popularity of the electric chair, states such as California, Nevada and Arizona felt that the new device did not offer a pain-free method of

  execution and so it was not a practical choice for them.