Old Sparky

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Old Sparky at the Tucker Unit, Arkansas. It was used to conduct 104 executions from 1926 to 1948.

Old Sparky is the nickname of the electric chairs in Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. Old Smokey was the nickname of the electric chairs used in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee.[1] "Old Sparky" is sometimes used to refer to electric chairs in general, and not one of a specific state.

Connecticut

Connecticut legislated lethal injection as its sole method of execution in 1995.[2] The last person executed by electrocution was Joseph "Mad Dog" Taborsky in May 1960.[3] Connecticut's "Old Sparky" has not been tested since it was moved from Wethersfield to the Northern Correctional Institution in Somers in 1962, and prison officials claim the prison's electrical system cannot handle it.[4]

Florida

The electric chair was the sole means of execution in

U.S. Supreme Court, signed lethal injection into law. Although no one has been executed in this manner since 1999, prisoners awaiting execution on Florida's death row may still be electrocuted at their request. It is currently located in Florida State Prison on the outskirts of Starke. It was known for frequent malfunctions in the 1990s, namely in the cases of Jesse Tafero (executed May 4, 1990), Pedro Medina (executed March 25, 1997) and Allen Lee Davis (executed July 8, 1999). Reportedly, 6-inch flames shot out of Tafero's head and 12-inch flames shot out of Medina's head, raising the question whether use of the electric chair was "cruel and unusual punishment". After the Medina execution, Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth commented, "People who wish to commit murder, they'd better not do it in the state of Florida because we may have a problem with the electric chair."[5]

Investigators have been unable to identify the cause of the problems.[6] The wooden chair had been replaced in early 1999 to accommodate Davis's girth. The electrical components remained the same for the system.

To ensure proper contact between the inmate's head and the electrode, a saline-soaked

sponge
stuffed between the two was necessary. In the Tafero incident, a natural sponge was replaced with a synthetic sponge that caught fire during the execution. In the Medina incident, prison officials apparently did not properly soak the sponge in saline and it caught fire as well. Photographs provided after Davis's execution showed that Davis suffered a bloody nose during the execution.

Davis execution

The 1999 execution of

Leander J. Shaw, Jr., took the extraordinary step of attaching to his opinion three color photographs of Davis's bloody body strapped in the chair.[7][8]
This publication marked the first time those photographs had surfaced on the Internet or, for that matter, anywhere outside court and prison files.

The effect was to create an immediate and sometimes macabre international debate over capital punishment in general and Florida's adherence to electrocution in particular. The Florida Supreme Court's web servers repeatedly crashed under the demand for access to the photographs, reputed to be the first actual photographs of an American state execution in decades. The images were used during a protest demonstration in Madrid in support of a Spaniard on Florida's death row. Some death penalty supporters in the United States viewed the photographs as a deterrent, apparently believing they had been posted on the website as a warning to all potentially dangerous criminals.

Political response

Some

Attorney General Butterworth, Florida's Governor Jeb Bush summoned the legislature into special session and in early 2000 it quickly approved lethal injection
as the means of execution that must be used unless the inmate requests electrocution. The Attorney General then notified the Federal court and it agreed to dismiss the case based on the change in law.

Georgia

Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Center back to Reidsville, while a squat, varnished replacement was constructed to replace it. Between 1924 and 1998, Georgia electrocuted 441 prisoners. Today the original chair is on public display at Georgia State Prison, while its replacement is situated in a closet near the death chamber at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Center.[9] It was used in the 1945 execution of Lena Baker.[10] In 1996, Georgia State Representative Doug Teper[11] unsuccessfully sponsored a bill to replace the state's electric chair with a guillotine in order to facilitate the use of the condemned prisoners' remains in organ donation.[12]

Kentucky

A gray stone, castle-like building
The Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville houses Kentucky's Old Sparky

Kentucky's electric chair, known as "Old Sparky", is located at the Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville, Kentucky. It was first used on July 8, 1911; the first inmate to die in the chair was James Buckner, convicted of killing a police officer several weeks earlier.[13] On July 13, 1928, Kentucky set a record by electrocuting eight men in its chair, each immediately after the other, more than any other state has electrocuted in a single day. The state has decommissioned the electric chair except for those whose capital crimes were committed prior to March 31, 1998, and choose death by electrocution rather than death by lethal injection or if lethal injection is declared unconstitutional by a court.[14] Prior to this legislated date, 163 deaths had occurred in Kentucky's electric chair. The last such execution by electric chair occurred on July 1, 1997, when convicted murderer Harold McQueen, Jr. was executed in it.

New York

The electric chair at Sing Sing prison in the early 20th century
Sing Sing prison
in the early 20th century.

In 1887, New York State established a committee to determine a new, more humane system of execution to replace hanging. Alfred P. Southwick, a member of the committee, developed the idea of putting electric current through a device after hearing about how relatively painlessly and quickly a drunken man died after touching exposed power lines. As Southwick was a dentist accustomed to performing procedures on sitting subjects, his electrical device appeared in the form of a chair.[15]

On June 4, 1888,

Auburn Prison, Auburn, New York
on August 6, 1890.

"Old Sparky" was first used at Sing Sing prison for a mass execution on July 7, 1891. The order of execution, which would start at 4:30 a.m., was listed as James J. Slocum, Harris Smiler, Shibuya Jugiro, and Joseph Wood.[16]

From 1914, all executions in New York state were conducted at Sing Sing prison using "Old Sparky". After a series of escapes from death row, the Death House at Sing Sing was built in 1920 and began executions in 1922. It was a prison within the Sing Sing prison. The Death House block, which had its own hospital, kitchen, visiting room, and exercise yard, had 24 single cells plus an additional three cells for condemned women. A chamber where a prisoner spent their last day was nicknamed the "Dance Hall". A corridor, known as the "Last Mile", connected the ante-room to the execution chamber in which the electric chair was situated.

Executions at Sing Sing were traditionally carried out at 11 p.m. on Thursdays. Condemned prisoners would be brought into the execution room escorted by seven guards and the

final decision on the sentence. The prisoner would be asked for any last words or for a benediction
. With a signal, the execution would then begin. Witnesses would leave once both doctors had confirmed that death had occurred.

In its 75 years of operation, a total of 695 people were executed by the electric chair in New York state (614 at Sing Sing).

capital punishment. The state would later reinstate the practice in 1995 using lethal injection, but the practice was abolished again in 2004, after the Court of Appeals ruled in People v. LaValle
that it violated the state constitution. No inmates were executed during the nine years that capital punishment was reinstated in New York.

Ohio

Ohio was the second state to adopt the electric chair as a means of execution, executing 315 people between 1897 and its last use was in 1963. The state stopped using the electric chair in 2001, and now exclusively utilizes lethal injection in executions. Ohio's Old Sparky is now a museum exhibit in the Ohio State Reformatory.

South Carolina

The state installed the "Old Sparky" in 1912 at the

Central Correctional Institution (CCI) in Columbia.[17] In 1944 it was used to execute 14-year-old George Stinney, the youngest person to be sentenced to death in the United States for more than a century.[18] In 1990, the chair was relocated to the newly built Broad River Correctional Institution. It is managed by the South Carolina Department of Corrections
.

In 1997, all death row inmates were relocated from Broad River to the Lieber Correctional Institution. The move provided better management controls and ensured correctional staff who dealt with condemned prisoners on a daily basis were not the same officers given the responsibility of carrying out capital punishment.[19]

The most recent use of "Old Sparky" was on June 21, 2008 when convicted murderer James Earl Reed opted for this method of execution.

Under Act 43 of 2021, the electric chair is now the primary method of execution, although a

firing squad is optional.[20]

Texas

Old Sparky, the electric chair formerly used at Huntsville Unit prison, Texas

The Texas electric chair to which the name "Old Sparky" is applied was in use from 1924 to 1964. During that time, it saw the deaths of 361 prisoners sentenced to die by judicial electrocution. It was built by incarcerated craftsmen in 1924.

execution by lethal injection.[22][23]

In 1971, the Greater Dallas Crime Commission, a business organization, circulated a petition to recommission Texas's "Old Sparky". The petition received 10,620 endorsements.[24]

West Virginia

The now-decommissioned electric chair known as "Old Sparky" at the now-closed West Virginia Penitentiary in Moundsville, West Virginia was installed in a facility originally used for hanging. It was in use from 1951 until 1959, during which time nine condemned prisoners were executed in the chair.[25] The chair was bolted to a low platform which covered what had previously been the trapdoor of the gallows used in the state's judicial hangings. Its control apparatus was designed in such a way that three push-button switches were to be simultaneously pressed by three members of the execution team; only one of these switches actually completed the circuit, allowing each member of the execution team to reassure himself that perhaps he had not been the one who had actually initiated the death of the condemned.[26]

In popular culture

See also

References

  1. ^ "Famous Electric Chairs Used in Executions". Answers.com. Archived from the original on 14 July 2014. Retrieved 6 July 2014.
  2. ^ Connecticut Death Penalty Laws
  3. ^ "Tales of North Haven's 'high crimes' captivate- The New Haven Register - Serving New Haven, Connecticut". Archived from the original on September 10, 2012.
  4. ^ "Execution Would Be The First Since 1960 (Published 1987)". The New York Times. June 27, 1987.
  5. South Coast Today
    , March 26, 1997. Retrieved on November 19, 2014.
  6. ^ Reports from the State Attorney General
  7. ^ "Florida Supreme Court Briefs - FSU College of Law Library". fall.fsulawrc.com. Retrieved 2019-12-09.
  8. ^ Provenzano v. Moore, 744 So. 2d 413, 441–43 (Fla. 1999)(Anstead, J., dissenting)
  9. ^ "Georgia's Electric Chair | New Georgia Encyclopedia". www.georgiaencyclopedia.org.
  10. ^ "Lena Baker Case". New Georgia Encyclopedia.
  11. ^ "Representative Doug Teper (D-61)". Georgia House of Representatives. Retrieved 2013-10-03.
  12. ^ "Georgia House of Representatives - 1995/1996 Sessions HB 1274 - Death penalty; guillotine provisions". The General Assembly of Georgia. Retrieved 2013-10-03.
  13. ^ Electric Chair Used in Kentucky The New York Times, July 9, 1911
  14. ^ "431.220 Execution of death sentence". lrc.ky.gov. Archived from the original on January 31, 2017. Retrieved April 9, 2017."431.223 Method of execution in event of unconstitutionality of KRS 431.220". lrc.ky.gov. Archived from the original on June 6, 2016. Retrieved April 9, 2017."431.224 Retroactive applicability". lrc.ky.gov. Archived from the original on February 17, 2017. Retrieved April 9, 2017.
  15. PMID 11806253
    .
  16. ^ "Jimmy Slocum Executed, Minor League Ballplayer". baseballhistoryblog.com. Archived from the original on 22 June 2010. Retrieved 21 November 2012.
  17. ^ State of South Carolina: Central Correctional Institution Timeline
  18. ^ "US judge hears appeal on teen executed in 1940s". BBC News. January 21, 2014.
  19. ^ "Death Row/Capital Punishment." South Carolina Department of Corrections. Retrieved on 17 August 2010.
  20. ^ "South Carolina Legislature Online - Bill Search by Bill Number". www.scstatehouse.gov. Retrieved 11 June 2021.
  21. ^ "America's Excellent Electric Chairs". RoadsideAmerica.com.
  22. ^ Texas electric chair gets permanent museum home USA Today, November 19, 2002
  23. ^ "Texas Prison Museum, Huntsville, Texas". RoadsideAmerica.com.
  24. ^ Bring Back "Old Sparky" Time, March 15, 1971
  25. ^ "Gallery".
  26. ^ "West Virginia Penitentiary | Moundsville | Prison Tours". West Virginia Penitentiary.
  27. ^ Cobb, Kayla (2020-09-21). "Did You Catch 'Ratched's Nod to 'The Green Mile'?". Decider. Retrieved 2020-11-03.
  28. ^ "History of Capital Punishment in California". California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Retrieved 2020-11-03.

External links

Look up Florida flambe in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
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