Latest / Stuff You Should Know / How the Electric Chair Works

Transcript

How the Electric Chair Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My
0:03
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
0:12
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryan over there,
0:15
Speaker 1: and there's Jerry over there, and this is Stuff you
0:17
Speaker 1: Should Know over here. And uh, I guess they probably
0:20
Speaker 1: found a little too chipper for what we're about to
0:22
Speaker 1: talk about, because it is grim stuff it is. And I,
0:28
Speaker 1: my friend, have a fact that you probably know, but
0:32
Speaker 1: I don't know if everyone else knows that the word
0:34
Speaker 1: electrocute is a portmanteau that was coined during the War
0:39
Speaker 1: of Currents. He did, I'm so happy with you. This
0:42
Speaker 1: is mine fact too. I was like, Chuck's gonna love this.
0:45
Speaker 1: I appreciate you assuming that I already knew it. Well,
0:48
Speaker 1: I assume you know everything. Let him have it. Chuck, Well, yeah,
0:52
Speaker 1: it's uh it comes from the words electric and execution.
0:57
Speaker 1: And when I saw that, I was like, that can't
0:59
Speaker 1: be right, Like, surely the word electrocute was around before then,
1:03
Speaker 1: But there was no before then, because there was no like,
1:08
Speaker 1: you know, mass use of electricity. And uh, I don't
1:11
Speaker 1: know who exactly coined it. I couldn't find that, but
1:13
Speaker 1: it was during the War of Currents. Yeah. I saw
1:16
Speaker 1: it in like a paper from that said that, and
1:19
Speaker 1: they said he just said it so matter of factly.
1:21
Speaker 1: I was like, what that doesn't Oh wow, that is right, electrocute,
1:26
Speaker 1: electro execution. It's like, um, the s executioner. It's like
1:30
Speaker 1: sex and the executioner, the sexecutioner. Yeah. And that's also
1:34
Speaker 1: a word that guess gets misused because a lot of
1:37
Speaker 1: people say someone's electrocuted if they just experienced a profound shock.
1:43
Speaker 1: But that's not the case. That's why I was confusing.
1:45
Speaker 1: I think at first force we're like, wait, that's not mikeense,
1:48
Speaker 1: it's not sensible. I also saw one another electro than Asia. Okay,
1:56
Speaker 1: I know it's not nearly as good as electrocute, but
1:58
Speaker 1: I wanted to toss it out to uh and this
2:01
Speaker 1: episode has what I believe maybe the best stuff you
2:05
Speaker 1: should know band name of all time. I know what
2:08
Speaker 1: that one is too, so we'll just hang onto that. Okay. Cool. Yeah,
2:11
Speaker 1: I saw that and I was like, there's Chuck's band name.
2:15
Speaker 1: So we're talking electrocution. And now that you know electrocution
2:19
Speaker 1: what the word means, you know, we're specifically talking about
2:22
Speaker 1: being put to death on purpose through electricity, And as
2:27
Speaker 1: far as we know, the only way that anyone's ever
2:30
Speaker 1: been put to put to death using electricity is in
2:33
Speaker 1: an electric chair, which is a specifically American invention. Did
2:39
Speaker 1: you know that before you researched this? I did, And UM,
2:43
Speaker 1: we should point out that the Philippines did use this
2:45
Speaker 1: for a while, but it was because we basically we're like,
2:49
Speaker 1: you guys should totally use the electric chair. Here, have
2:51
Speaker 1: one right back in I think like six and they
2:55
Speaker 1: used it for fifty years until ninety six and then
2:59
Speaker 1: they were like, this is really gross. We're gonna stop
3:02
Speaker 1: using this and executing people all together in that right?
3:07
Speaker 1: Did they all together? I just assumed they went to
3:09
Speaker 1: firing squad or something. I think I don't know if
3:12
Speaker 1: it was in seventy six, but I think they got
3:13
Speaker 1: rid of the death note perhaps how very civil So
3:19
Speaker 1: um with the electric chair. Um, we've we've had, Like
3:24
Speaker 1: I said, it was an American invention and it's been
3:25
Speaker 1: around since. I guess the eighteen eighties is when it
3:29
Speaker 1: really started to kind of make a make its debut.
3:34
Speaker 1: But it's it's really kind of basic and simple for
3:37
Speaker 1: something is um seemingly complicated. Is harnessing electricity to put
3:43
Speaker 1: in to extinguish a human life. Right, It's a chair
3:47
Speaker 1: that you strap somebody to and run electricity through their
3:50
Speaker 1: body until they die. It's really about that simple, Yeah,
3:54
Speaker 1: they I mean, if you've ever seen a movie um
3:57
Speaker 1: or god forbid, if you've ever been to an execution,
4:01
Speaker 1: can't imagine doing something like that. But people do that. Uh.
4:06
Speaker 1: And by the way, you know, uh, if I say
4:10
Speaker 1: things like that, I'm just speaking for myself. Everyone, Well,
4:14
Speaker 1: we did like a whole lethal injection episode and you
4:16
Speaker 1: came out pretty strongly against the death penalty if I
4:19
Speaker 1: remember correctly, so, so it's already out there. Yeah. I
4:23
Speaker 1: just if I seem like I'm turned off by a
4:25
Speaker 1: lot of this is because I am. But there are
4:28
Speaker 1: a lot of people in this country that when they
4:30
Speaker 1: hear about like flame shooting out of someone's head and
4:34
Speaker 1: blood count coming out of someone's eyeballs and the smell
4:36
Speaker 1: of cooked flesh, they're like, heck, yeah, like zap him again.
4:41
Speaker 1: Shouldn't it shouldn't have killed those people? You're getting what
4:43
Speaker 1: you deserve. So there are a lot of people out
4:45
Speaker 1: there that feel that way. And I'm just not one
4:47
Speaker 1: of them. Yeah. I was reading about the execution of
4:50
Speaker 1: Ted Bundy. He was electrocuted in Florida, I'm pretty sure.
4:54
Speaker 1: And there were Yeah, it was Florida. There were people
4:57
Speaker 1: partying outside of the prison where was put to death,
5:00
Speaker 1: remember holding like a barbecue. What what year was is
5:04
Speaker 1: like maybe or eighty nine. I feel like I was
5:07
Speaker 1: in college, but I remember seeing that on the news
5:09
Speaker 1: and that was just like a it seems like a
5:11
Speaker 1: tailgate was going on. Yeah, that's what it seems like
5:15
Speaker 1: from what I read. And and there was apparently zero
5:18
Speaker 1: Bundy supporters. It was all people who are there for
5:21
Speaker 1: to cheer on his death. Um, so they're definitely people
5:24
Speaker 1: who feel that way out there for sure. Uh So. Yeah,
5:27
Speaker 1: getting back to what you're saying, though, it's it is
5:29
Speaker 1: very rudimentary. There was a metal cap that is the electrode,
5:33
Speaker 1: and that is put onto a prisoner's shaved head. Um.
5:38
Speaker 1: There is a natural sponge with saline salt water in
5:43
Speaker 1: that sponge, and um salt water is conductive and that's
5:47
Speaker 1: the reason they used that. But there have been a
5:50
Speaker 1: lot of problems with UM the wrong sponges, too much salt,
5:54
Speaker 1: too little salt, too much water, too little water. But
5:58
Speaker 1: that's generally how it works. That goes in between in
6:00
Speaker 1: uh the cap uh that metal cap in the in
6:03
Speaker 1: the person's head. And then there's another electrode um that's
6:09
Speaker 1: usually on the leg of the prisoner, but sometimes it's
6:11
Speaker 1: on like the foot or the base of the spine
6:14
Speaker 1: or something. And this all just allows electricity to flow
6:18
Speaker 1: freely through a person's body until they die, right right,
6:21
Speaker 1: Because the the electrode that goes into the head, that's
6:24
Speaker 1: where the electricity comes from. And then the other electrode
6:28
Speaker 1: that's connected to the ground like through the leg, allows
6:31
Speaker 1: the current to pass through the body all the way
6:33
Speaker 1: right um. And that's you know, from that free flow
6:38
Speaker 1: of electricity, that's where you get these tremendously horrific results,
6:43
Speaker 1: ultimately culminating in the death of the person. And then, Chuck,
6:47
Speaker 1: you said that they put a sponge on people's heads.
6:50
Speaker 1: It has to be a natural sponge, as you say that.
6:53
Speaker 1: So apparently they found as as we'll see that only
6:57
Speaker 1: a natural sponge will work. But one of the other
7:00
Speaker 1: purposes that serves besides acting is like kind of a
7:03
Speaker 1: reservoir for the saltwater conductor. Um. It also it fills
7:08
Speaker 1: the space between the metal cap and the the victim's
7:12
Speaker 1: head because you're like the metal caps is like this
7:15
Speaker 1: little metal cap in your head is not a perfect
7:17
Speaker 1: cap shaped dome. So the sponge is meant to also
7:22
Speaker 1: kind of fill that space and like get the electricity
7:24
Speaker 1: everywhere going through your head. Yeah. And as far as
7:27
Speaker 1: the chair, the actual wooden chair, um, I mean, it
7:30
Speaker 1: could have been anything. It could have been some upright
7:33
Speaker 1: thing like Hannibal elector was strapped to like a upright gurney,
7:38
Speaker 1: but they settled on a chair. Um. It's generally this big,
7:41
Speaker 1: heavy oak chair and many times, um, irony of all ironies,
7:45
Speaker 1: that chair is built by prison labor. I saw that too,
7:49
Speaker 1: and it's almost invariably called old Sparky. But there are
7:53
Speaker 1: also some that were called like old Smokey. And then
7:56
Speaker 1: the worst of all I think was the Louisiana is
7:58
Speaker 1: called gruesome Gurtie. It's this terrible name for a chair.
8:03
Speaker 1: Actually it's a perfect name for a an electric chair actually,
8:07
Speaker 1: now I think about it. Yeah, but the I don't know,
8:10
Speaker 1: the sort of I guess tradition of naming electric chairs
8:15
Speaker 1: these cute names is also something that's a bit of
8:18
Speaker 1: a turn off. Yeah, just a tap tap it. So
8:22
Speaker 1: you're strapped into this chair. Uh, obviously your arms are
8:25
Speaker 1: strapped in. Um, your legs are strapped in. Most of
8:29
Speaker 1: the times, you have a strap across your chest and
8:31
Speaker 1: growing area. And again the chair is just has nothing
8:36
Speaker 1: to do. It doesn't have electricity um running through it
8:39
Speaker 1: at all. That is just the means to keep the
8:41
Speaker 1: prisoners strapped in, right, right, because when that switch is thrown,
8:48
Speaker 1: your muscles just contract to the point where you could
8:50
Speaker 1: just snap bones, joints get um just thrown out of
8:54
Speaker 1: joint literally. Um. It's a huge muscle muscular contraction throughout
8:59
Speaker 1: your entire your body, because that's how your that's how
9:03
Speaker 1: your muscles contract is through electricity and electrochemical reaction. Right.
9:07
Speaker 1: So when you introduce a huge amount of electricity to
9:09
Speaker 1: your body all at once, all the muscles in your
9:12
Speaker 1: body contract um and it's so much so that if
9:16
Speaker 1: you're not strapped in, you would just fly right out
9:18
Speaker 1: of the chair. I think in it must have been
9:20
Speaker 1: our electricity episode we talked about how when people who
9:25
Speaker 1: have touched uh an electrical wire, their um muscles have
9:29
Speaker 1: contracted so so UM strongly that they've thrown themselves across
9:34
Speaker 1: the room. Like, you're not blown across the room by
9:38
Speaker 1: the electricity. That's your muscles contracting and shooting you across
9:41
Speaker 1: the room. That's why the they have people strapped to
9:44
Speaker 1: the chair in the electric chair to keep them from
9:47
Speaker 1: shooting across the room when the electricity shoots room. Yeah,
9:50
Speaker 1: and depending on what states you're in, you know, they're
9:52
Speaker 1: all going to have their own protocol for how to
9:55
Speaker 1: carry out in like, uh, electrocution, and Um, we should
10:00
Speaker 1: also point out to that this is they're generally not
10:03
Speaker 1: used anymore. Um, there are only nine states but still
10:07
Speaker 1: have that option. Um, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia.
10:15
Speaker 1: Are you noticing a trend? And then finally Oklahoma, Uh,
10:20
Speaker 1: not the only state not in the South. Um. But
10:23
Speaker 1: but it's not something that is generally still used in
10:26
Speaker 1: the United States. No, but it is a backup, and
10:31
Speaker 1: it's not a backup. I think if like lethal injection
10:33
Speaker 1: doesn't work as a backup, if the prisoners specifically says
10:36
Speaker 1: I don't want lethal injection, I want the electric chair. Right, So,
10:40
Speaker 1: depending on where you are, the protocol is gonna vary um.
10:43
Speaker 1: This one is pulled from Tennessee. That was uh an
10:47
Speaker 1: execution last year that Edmund Zagorsky, I guess asked for
10:51
Speaker 1: the chair because it was two thousand eighteen and this
10:55
Speaker 1: was the protocol. Uh. The electric chair will release and
11:00
Speaker 1: fifty volts of electricity for twenty seconds, will stop for
11:04
Speaker 1: fifteen seconds, and then we'll release another fifty volts UH
11:09
Speaker 1: for another fifteen seconds. UM. After the first wave of electricity,
11:13
Speaker 1: officials will wait five minutes and then close the blinds
11:16
Speaker 1: into the witness room. A doctor will check for signs
11:18
Speaker 1: of life. If there are none, the doctor will pronounce
11:21
Speaker 1: him dead. If he is still alive, the blinds will
11:23
Speaker 1: be raised another round. Uh. I assume like an encore,
11:30
Speaker 1: the curtain goes back up in another round of electricity
11:34
Speaker 1: will be administered and the doctor will be called in again. Right.
11:37
Speaker 1: How about that? That that Encore think kind of got beach.
11:42
Speaker 1: I mean that's I don't know, the parallels are obvious,
11:46
Speaker 1: so the uh yeah, yeah. But I think also in
11:48
Speaker 1: the lethal injection, when we explain like the X, like
11:51
Speaker 1: the state witnesses, people who are hired to come and
11:53
Speaker 1: witness on behalf of the people because the state is
11:56
Speaker 1: executing people on behalf of the people of that state.
12:00
Speaker 1: These are the representatives of everybody else who lives in
12:02
Speaker 1: that state. I mean, yes, of course there's no way
12:05
Speaker 1: you wouldn't get weirdos. But if I remember correctly, they
12:07
Speaker 1: try to weed those people out. But yes, I get
12:11
Speaker 1: where you're coming from. I'm not trying to like shoot
12:13
Speaker 1: your opinions down or anything like that. Yeah. So, um,
12:17
Speaker 1: one of the things, like you said, there's like se volts.
12:20
Speaker 1: I've seen that slow, like I've seen two thousand at
12:23
Speaker 1: least is what you want. And then the amps are
12:26
Speaker 1: really the big one because the voltage is kind of
12:28
Speaker 1: like the water pressure in a hose, where the amps
12:31
Speaker 1: are like the actual flow rate of how much is
12:33
Speaker 1: coming through. So the amps are what kill you, they say,
12:36
Speaker 1: But you have to balance the amps, and that you
12:40
Speaker 1: want to you want to introduce enough amps through voltage
12:44
Speaker 1: into the inmate to kill them quickly and painlessly. Because
12:49
Speaker 1: I don't think we've said the reason the the electric
12:53
Speaker 1: chair was brought around was not to just just set
12:57
Speaker 1: somebody on fire as you were executing them. It was
12:59
Speaker 1: too because it was thought to be like a painless
13:01
Speaker 1: and humane way to execute a prisoner. That's supposedly the
13:05
Speaker 1: point of executions. So you want to balance a quick
13:10
Speaker 1: and painless death through enough amps and voltage introduced with
13:15
Speaker 1: not so many amps and and not a high enough
13:18
Speaker 1: amount of voltage that you cook the person and set
13:22
Speaker 1: them on fire. That's basically the tightrope that as state
13:25
Speaker 1: executioner who electrocute somebody is walking and figuring out how
13:30
Speaker 1: much too how much juice to deliver for the electric chair. Yeah,
13:34
Speaker 1: and um, I tried to find if you know, I've
13:38
Speaker 1: always heard that there were dummy switches and that like
13:41
Speaker 1: three guards will all flip a switch at the same time,
13:43
Speaker 1: so no one knows if they were the one. Um.
13:46
Speaker 1: And I think that was just I didn't see any
13:49
Speaker 1: support for that. And that may just be built on
13:51
Speaker 1: the old thing of the firing squad where someone has blanks. Um,
13:57
Speaker 1: and you know, so like one person, everyone basically can say, well,
14:02
Speaker 1: I may have had the blank, I may not have
14:04
Speaker 1: actually had the bullet in my gun. But that is
14:06
Speaker 1: apparently not the case with electric chairs, and a volunteer
14:10
Speaker 1: throws one switch, um, the you know, it's generally a
14:13
Speaker 1: prison guard has has said this is something that I
14:16
Speaker 1: will do I'm volunteering for this. You can't apparently force
14:20
Speaker 1: someone to do this. Um, it's always a volunteer, right.
14:24
Speaker 1: And depending on the state too, they might not actually
14:27
Speaker 1: work at the prison. They might that might just be
14:29
Speaker 1: their job as an execution maybe a second job they
14:32
Speaker 1: have or something like that. UM. And from what I've seen,
14:34
Speaker 1: there typically called electricians. The um electro executioner is called
14:40
Speaker 1: an electrician. And New York had some very famous and
14:43
Speaker 1: prolific ones, kind of at the heyday of the electric
14:46
Speaker 1: chair and like the first half of the twentie century. Yeah,
14:50
Speaker 1: one of them killed are you ready for this is
14:53
Speaker 1: one of the most gruesome things I've ever heard in
14:54
Speaker 1: my life. One of them killed seven men in succession
14:59
Speaker 1: and why day And they had all seven men in
15:04
Speaker 1: sing sing on death row like in the in the
15:07
Speaker 1: death house at the same time. And so as one
15:10
Speaker 1: would be taken away, the other eleven would just be
15:12
Speaker 1: sitting there like freaking out, like and then the next
15:16
Speaker 1: one would come, and it just kept whittling down. And
15:19
Speaker 1: as they went through this day of executions, UM, the
15:22
Speaker 1: like the the sense among the inmates, so they were
15:26
Speaker 1: like almost losing their minds. It's one of the cruelest
15:28
Speaker 1: things I've ever heard in my life, at least in
15:30
Speaker 1: the modern era. You know, there's no way to to
15:34
Speaker 1: um execute prisoners, and I believe they've really gotten away
15:39
Speaker 1: from them. You don't execute more than one person in
15:41
Speaker 1: a day at the same place. I think it's really
15:44
Speaker 1: kind of like your time to shine. It's your special day.
15:46
Speaker 1: You're not going to share it with eleven other or
15:48
Speaker 1: eight six other people anymore. Um. But the executioner, the
15:53
Speaker 1: electrician for New York who did that, I can't remember
15:55
Speaker 1: his name right now, but he actually ended up taking
15:57
Speaker 1: his own life because apparently he was doing us to
16:00
Speaker 1: pay the medical bills for his wife, who was chronically ill,
16:04
Speaker 1: and this paid really really well, and eventually she died
16:08
Speaker 1: and he abruptly quit and then went and took his
16:12
Speaker 1: took his life. Yeah, So it's not like it's not
16:15
Speaker 1: like if you're an electrician or you're an executioner. I
16:18
Speaker 1: I don't think it's kind of like this is a
16:20
Speaker 1: fun thing like I think, I think this kind of
16:23
Speaker 1: destroys everybody involved, basically. Yeah, and so you know you
16:27
Speaker 1: mentioned that, uh, it was supposedly the humane way of
16:31
Speaker 1: killing people, and we'll we'll get to how that happened
16:34
Speaker 1: in a minute. But um, the two gentleman Jean Louis
16:38
Speaker 1: Provost and Frederica Batelli, they, by the way, we got
16:44
Speaker 1: an email about someone who was not happy with my
16:46
Speaker 1: Italian Yes, but we got we got a couple from
16:51
Speaker 1: people who were Italian Americans saying like, I love it,
16:54
Speaker 1: don't ever stop. Yeah. The one guy who said I
16:57
Speaker 1: went too far was also very upset about my care
17:00
Speaker 1: actorization of New Englanders as liking Duncan donuts as well. Wow,
17:05
Speaker 1: So I sort of took that one with a grain
17:07
Speaker 1: of salt. That's a that's a big fat that's a
17:09
Speaker 1: salt lick. I think, yeah, donut jokes, come on, stop
17:15
Speaker 1: Duncan donuts. So anyway, those two gentlemen, they did a
17:19
Speaker 1: lot of research into heart defribrillation in eighteen nineties, and
17:24
Speaker 1: the idea that time was, um, hey, what's going on here?
17:28
Speaker 1: When you electrocute someone is is it instantly sort of
17:32
Speaker 1: kills the prisoner by a massive brain damage and a
17:36
Speaker 1: stoppage interruption of the heart. And so that's why they
17:39
Speaker 1: thought it was more humane than like hanging, which we'll
17:42
Speaker 1: get to in a sect. But um, that is not
17:45
Speaker 1: the case, as we will see from the scores of
17:50
Speaker 1: butched um electrocutions over the years. Right, that's why if
17:55
Speaker 1: you if you read like these procedures for executing a
17:58
Speaker 1: prisoner using electricity city, there is two rounds of juice. Invariably,
18:04
Speaker 1: the first one supposedly destroys the brain, but the second one.
18:08
Speaker 1: Remember how I said all the muscles in the body
18:10
Speaker 1: like contract, Well, one of the biggest muscles in the
18:13
Speaker 1: body is your heart, and um, your heart contracts, which
18:18
Speaker 1: ironically protects it from dying. Right, yeah, So that's why
18:23
Speaker 1: they'll stop with the electricity, the electrical flow for several
18:28
Speaker 1: seconds to let the hearts like come out of seizure again,
18:31
Speaker 1: and then when they do it a second time, allegedly,
18:34
Speaker 1: that is the one that's meant to destroy the heart.
18:36
Speaker 1: So initially the first one is supposed to destroy the
18:40
Speaker 1: conscious mind and then ultimately the brain. And it's supposedly
18:44
Speaker 1: happens very fast. The number you'll see bandied about is
18:47
Speaker 1: that it happens in one two a second, which is
18:51
Speaker 1: faster than you can consciously register pain. So you're you're dead,
18:55
Speaker 1: you're at least unconscious, and then you're you're dead. Right
18:58
Speaker 1: after that before you can feel pain. But the person
19:02
Speaker 1: I think I've seen associated with that is a guy
19:05
Speaker 1: named Fred Luketer who's actually like a UM, well known
19:10
Speaker 1: UM engineer of Tennessee's electric chair, and I believe a
19:14
Speaker 1: Holocaust denier. Two And I didn't see anywhere else, like
19:18
Speaker 1: any legitimate study that showed that. So but it's like
19:22
Speaker 1: somebody said it, and everybody's just gonna go with that.
19:25
Speaker 1: But supposedly that's what the first just does is knock
19:28
Speaker 1: you out and kill you brain wise, your brain dead,
19:31
Speaker 1: and then the second one kills your your cardiac system. Yeah.
19:34
Speaker 1: It was Errol Morris at a documentary about him actually,
19:37
Speaker 1: um about Fred luke Yeah, it was called Mr. Death
19:43
Speaker 1: and um. Part of it was on you know, his
19:45
Speaker 1: work with the electric chair, and then part of it
19:48
Speaker 1: was on your right, the fact that he is a
19:51
Speaker 1: notorious Holocaust denier. And guess what he does now. I
19:55
Speaker 1: have no idea. He apparently is a works in the
19:59
Speaker 1: garden apart of a home depot really in his old age. Wow,
20:04
Speaker 1: well he I'm correct that he built Tennessee's electric chair.
20:08
Speaker 1: He wasn't an actual electrician, right, or an executioner? No? No, no,
20:12
Speaker 1: he uh it's it's a really good documentary, of course
20:14
Speaker 1: because it's Errol Morris, but yeah, you should check it out.
20:18
Speaker 1: You wanted to take a break. Uh yeah, we'll take
20:21
Speaker 1: a break and we'll come back and we'll talk about
20:22
Speaker 1: a very famous Supreme Court case and then a lots
20:25
Speaker 1: about hanging right after this. Okay, Chuck, So we're back,
20:56
Speaker 1: and you wanted to talk about the Supreme Court. You said,
20:58
Speaker 1: what about I love it when your ki Uh yeah,
21:05
Speaker 1: the U Supreme Court, uh chose not to review a
21:08
Speaker 1: case Glass v. Louisiana, UM, which would have been a
21:13
Speaker 1: very big deal because it was on the constitutionality of
21:16
Speaker 1: the electric chair, the whole that whole thing about cruel
21:19
Speaker 1: and unusual punishment UM has always been a talking point
21:24
Speaker 1: when it comes to whether or not people should be
21:26
Speaker 1: put to death and just how to do that. And
21:28
Speaker 1: they chose, like I said, they chose not to review it.
21:30
Speaker 1: But very famously, uh, Justice William Brennan wrote a dissent
21:36
Speaker 1: that described an execution like this And by the way,
21:40
Speaker 1: this this part is particularly gruesome. So if you if
21:43
Speaker 1: you don't want to hear about this, then just tune
21:45
Speaker 1: out for like twenty seconds when the switch is thrown,
21:48
Speaker 1: The condemned prisoner cringes, leaps, and fights the straps with
21:52
Speaker 1: amazing strength. The hands turned red then white, and the
21:55
Speaker 1: cords of the next stand out like steel bands. The
21:58
Speaker 1: prisoners limbs, fingers, toes, and faces severely contorted. The force
22:01
Speaker 1: of the electrical current is so powerful that the prisoner's
22:04
Speaker 1: eyeballs sometimes pop out and rest on his cheeks. The
22:07
Speaker 1: prisoner often defecates, urinates, and vomits blood and jewel. Sometimes
22:12
Speaker 1: the prisoner catches on fire, particularly if he perspires excessively.
22:17
Speaker 1: And witnesses here allowed and sustain sound like bacon frying,
22:21
Speaker 1: and the sickly sweet smell of burning flesh permeates the chamber.
22:25
Speaker 1: And and dude, we should point out, like Brennan wasn't saying,
22:29
Speaker 1: you know, in the worst case scenario, this is what happens.
22:33
Speaker 1: That's a pretty standard. That's standard for an electric chair execution.
22:39
Speaker 1: And then there's like there was one other thing too
22:41
Speaker 1: that I saw still in the gruesome zone. Everybody, Um,
22:45
Speaker 1: you said that the uh, well, Brennan said that the
22:47
Speaker 1: the person gurgles often, Um, they'll also sigh, and apparently
22:53
Speaker 1: it for freaks out witnesses because they're like he's still alive.
22:56
Speaker 1: And what happens again the when the muscles tracked, UM,
23:01
Speaker 1: whatever air is in the lungs gets trapped in there
23:03
Speaker 1: because your epple glottis shuts tight just it's not opening again.
23:08
Speaker 1: So then when the electricity has turned off and your
23:11
Speaker 1: muscles relaxed, that air is expelled out and it sounds
23:15
Speaker 1: like you're sighing or you're gurgling if there's you know,
23:18
Speaker 1: fluid in there. UM. And it's just another terrible a
23:23
Speaker 1: facet of this of this this kind of execution. Yeah,
23:27
Speaker 1: so we promised talk of hanging, and that's really how
23:30
Speaker 1: the electric chair came about. Um. In Europe they had
23:33
Speaker 1: uh long used the guillotine, but here in the United
23:37
Speaker 1: States kind of from the beginning. UM, I guess there're
23:40
Speaker 1: firing squads, but hanging was really the um quote unquote
23:44
Speaker 1: humane way of executing prisoners for a long time. UM
23:47
Speaker 1: with the idea that, um, if it's in the case
23:51
Speaker 1: of a gallows, that door would drop, you would drop
23:55
Speaker 1: and your neck would snap basically and you would die
23:58
Speaker 1: very very quickly. But that was not always the case. UM.
24:03
Speaker 1: It was a man named Tom Ketchum in nineteen and
24:05
Speaker 1: one and then New Mexico, New Mexico Territory. His head
24:09
Speaker 1: was completely torn off of his body. Yep, that's just one.
24:12
Speaker 1: There were plenty of them that actually happened to a
24:15
Speaker 1: woman named Eva Duggan had that happened to her in
24:17
Speaker 1: Arizona in ninety as well. And it's not like it's
24:22
Speaker 1: it's not that's not the only possible outcome from a
24:25
Speaker 1: botched hanging. Like they can go the other way as well,
24:28
Speaker 1: where you're not like your neck doesn't snap or your
24:32
Speaker 1: head doesn't pop off and you're just slowly suffocating. There
24:36
Speaker 1: was the case of one guy, I think his name
24:38
Speaker 1: is William williams Um who was just born to lose
24:41
Speaker 1: apparently um he he he dropped and didn't it didn't strangle,
24:48
Speaker 1: it didn't um break his neck, he didn't do anything,
24:50
Speaker 1: and the prison officials had to like basically stranglate him
24:53
Speaker 1: with the with the rope to kill him. And so
24:56
Speaker 1: all this stuff, and there's plenty of them. They're all
24:58
Speaker 1: this stuff is making the news at the time, and
25:03
Speaker 1: it was kind of converging with a public sentiment against
25:07
Speaker 1: the death penalty in general. So if the public is
25:10
Speaker 1: kind of like, oh, not quite sure, we should be
25:13
Speaker 1: killing people. I don't. I don't feel very good about this.
25:16
Speaker 1: And then news of like botched hangings are coming out.
25:19
Speaker 1: Something's going to change. And there are basically two things
25:22
Speaker 1: that can happen at a point in history like this.
25:25
Speaker 1: Either the society can say, you know what, execution in
25:28
Speaker 1: general is just bad, bad news, and let's just not
25:32
Speaker 1: do that anymore. Or maybe we do need execution, but
25:37
Speaker 1: we need to find a better way to do it
25:39
Speaker 1: in pronto, because this is not okay any longer. Yeah,
25:42
Speaker 1: there was there was another kind of hanging. Um. You
25:45
Speaker 1: always think of the gallows and that trap door, but
25:48
Speaker 1: there's something called a suspension hanging where um, the person
25:52
Speaker 1: is on the ground with a rope around their neck
25:55
Speaker 1: and weights are dropped over a pulley and then you
25:58
Speaker 1: are jerked up instead of being dropped and that supposedly
26:02
Speaker 1: will snap your neck. And that was the case with
26:04
Speaker 1: the execution of Roxelanna Drew's seven. Um. She was small
26:12
Speaker 1: and so when that um, when that rope was jerked up,
26:16
Speaker 1: her neck was not snapped and she slowly was strangled
26:19
Speaker 1: to death for about twenty minutes. And um, she had
26:23
Speaker 1: killed her husband. And that was a case that was
26:25
Speaker 1: uh controversial for a lot of reasons. Um. It was
26:28
Speaker 1: very much a pre planned killing. But she claimed that
26:32
Speaker 1: she had been abused. She had her children involved in
26:36
Speaker 1: the killing. Um, it's it was. It's a pretty interesting story. Um.
26:41
Speaker 1: She sent her ten year old out, uh and then
26:44
Speaker 1: had her teenage kids help out. So one of the
26:48
Speaker 1: kids tied a rope around her dad's neck. Um. The woman,
26:53
Speaker 1: the mother, Roxanna Roxelanna shot him. Um, but I think
26:58
Speaker 1: didn't use the gun properly so it didn't kill him.
27:02
Speaker 1: Gave the gun to her fourteen year old nephew. He
27:05
Speaker 1: shot him a few more times. The husband's laying there
27:08
Speaker 1: unable to move, pleading for help, and then she comes
27:12
Speaker 1: barreling in with an axe and cuts his head off. Jeez. Yeah.
27:17
Speaker 1: So uh she takes the head and the body to
27:20
Speaker 1: the parlor. Uh. They stayed there for about a day.
27:22
Speaker 1: Then she cut the body up, burnt it and got
27:24
Speaker 1: rid of the ashes, and then was was found out.
27:29
Speaker 1: So um. But the upshot of all this was when
27:31
Speaker 1: she was executed. She didn't die quickly and humanely. Um.
27:36
Speaker 1: She died very slowly, painfully, and very important publicly at
27:41
Speaker 1: a time when the public in particular. New York was like,
27:44
Speaker 1: we're better than this, and so, um, not not strictly
27:49
Speaker 1: from her um her botched execution, but definitely in part
27:55
Speaker 1: because of it, New York said, we need to find
27:57
Speaker 1: a better way to do this. Um, how can we
28:00
Speaker 1: how can we execute somebody better? And they said, um,
28:05
Speaker 1: prominent lawyer Albridge Thomas Jerry go. And so Jerry formed, Well,
28:10
Speaker 1: he's like, well, you guys picked me first, So we're
28:12
Speaker 1: gonna call the commission, the Jerry Commission, and um he
28:16
Speaker 1: assembled two other guys, including a man named Alfred P. Southwick,
28:21
Speaker 1: who was a dentist who was interested in this kind
28:23
Speaker 1: of stuff. He was like, you know what, being a
28:27
Speaker 1: dentist isn't scratching that sadistic itch? Right? He was basically
28:31
Speaker 1: like the founder of Ohio Art, you know exactly. So
28:35
Speaker 1: he's so the three of them get together and they
28:37
Speaker 1: spent two years figuring out, like looking at different ways
28:40
Speaker 1: of execution, and they looked at all of them. Man,
28:43
Speaker 1: they released this um this journal report, like a formal
28:47
Speaker 1: government New York state government report that details and chronicles
28:51
Speaker 1: all the different ways that you could officially kill somebody
28:54
Speaker 1: from precipitation, which is pushing him off a cliff to
28:59
Speaker 1: um boiling them alive, whether you want it to be
29:02
Speaker 1: you know, molten lead or water doesn't really matter at
29:04
Speaker 1: that point. UM to crushing from heavy stones. And they
29:08
Speaker 1: looked at thirty four different methods of execution in detail,
29:12
Speaker 1: and they concluded that none of them we're an improvement
29:16
Speaker 1: on hanging. That yeah, some of them would definitely like
29:19
Speaker 1: provide the public spectacle that would probably deter other people
29:23
Speaker 1: or make them think twice about killing somebody, but um,
29:27
Speaker 1: definitely no more humane, as inhumane as hanging could be,
29:31
Speaker 1: especially a botched hanging. So they said, okay, well we're
29:34
Speaker 1: back to square one. But one of us, south Alfred P. Southwick,
29:37
Speaker 1: thinks he knows of a method that we haven't hit
29:39
Speaker 1: upon yet, and it was electricity. No, he had seen
29:42
Speaker 1: a a Marx Brothers movie and he said, maybe we
29:46
Speaker 1: should just drop a safe on someone's head as they
29:48
Speaker 1: walked down the sidewalk. Right, They're like, yeah, I could
29:51
Speaker 1: kind of work, but if you miss, you just really
29:54
Speaker 1: maim them terribly. Yeah, So he came upon electrocution as
29:58
Speaker 1: a as what he thought was like the best way
30:01
Speaker 1: because electricity was, um, this is where we get into
30:04
Speaker 1: like kind of things aligning and carbon arc lining becoming widespread,
30:09
Speaker 1: and cities and people having um street lights and electricity
30:13
Speaker 1: in their houses was in in big cities. Was sort
30:16
Speaker 1: of a new thing, but it was super dangerous and
30:19
Speaker 1: there were a lot of cases of people getting electrocuted.
30:22
Speaker 1: Um that was a drunken buffalo. A drunk man who
30:25
Speaker 1: grabbed hold of a generator, Um, just to sort of
30:28
Speaker 1: see what it felt like, died instantly. And that's when
30:31
Speaker 1: Southfolk was like, wait a minute, I think we're onto
30:34
Speaker 1: something here. If it can kill people just instantly, and
30:36
Speaker 1: then that's kind of what we're after. Right. So the
30:40
Speaker 1: thing is is like that whole instantly thing, that's a
30:43
Speaker 1: little subjective. Um, it happened once to this guy, right, Yeah,
30:47
Speaker 1: it happened one time. And then also like this is
30:50
Speaker 1: what an eyewitness standing, you know, a little ways away says,
30:54
Speaker 1: it happened he died instantly. Are you fudging a little bit?
30:57
Speaker 1: Because instantly or not really kind of counts when you're
31:00
Speaker 1: looking for a new method of execution for a state
31:02
Speaker 1: to use over and over and over again and to
31:05
Speaker 1: spread through all all fifty states. Basically, Um, it's really
31:09
Speaker 1: important that it's instant, and they were like, yea, yeah,
31:11
Speaker 1: it's instant. Let's just look into this one because it's
31:14
Speaker 1: got to be better than hanging. So they they did,
31:17
Speaker 1: and when they found out that, um that when it
31:20
Speaker 1: became public and announced that they were um kind of
31:23
Speaker 1: forming a sub set to the Jerry Commission called Chuck
31:29
Speaker 1: the Electric Death Commission best band name of all time.
31:33
Speaker 1: We have arrived at the band name. Everybody, Yeah, there's
31:36
Speaker 1: not a lot on this. Even I looked into this
31:38
Speaker 1: a little more and it's not. It's not all over
31:41
Speaker 1: the internet. Surprisingly, no, it's not. But it's like I've
31:44
Speaker 1: seen it in some reputable sources, so it's not like
31:46
Speaker 1: it's just totally made up or a myth or a
31:49
Speaker 1: legend or something like that. I think I think it was.
31:51
Speaker 1: It was basically they said, Okay, the Jerry Commission is
31:55
Speaker 1: has done its job. We're gonna set ourselves up in
31:59
Speaker 1: this own com it's in the Electric Death Commission, to
32:01
Speaker 1: basically show that electrocution is a good and humane way
32:06
Speaker 1: to elected to take a life right for the state.
32:10
Speaker 1: So um, Alfred Southwick fell in with a guy named
32:14
Speaker 1: George Fell. Appropriately enough, George Fell was a surgeon. He
32:20
Speaker 1: was a tinkerer, an engineer, and um, he became extremely
32:24
Speaker 1: interested in the applications of electricity to cause death as well.
32:29
Speaker 1: And so Southwick and Fell basically got together and formed
32:32
Speaker 1: this like weirdo cabal to figure out how to create
32:36
Speaker 1: an electric chair. Yeah. This part I don't quite get
32:40
Speaker 1: because I know that and I can hardly even say
32:43
Speaker 1: the sentence out loud. But I know that they practiced
32:46
Speaker 1: on stray dogs, like they electrocuted hundreds of dogs. But
32:52
Speaker 1: it says here they were supplied by the Buffalo a
32:55
Speaker 1: s p c A not knowingly right, Yes, I saw
32:58
Speaker 1: somewhere chuck at for at this time. Thanks to these guys,
33:03
Speaker 1: that became the method of euthanasia that the local animal
33:07
Speaker 1: shelters used on stray animals. Yeah, so, I I guess
33:12
Speaker 1: they started testing on him and it became like so
33:14
Speaker 1: um so useful. I guess that the s p c
33:18
Speaker 1: A said, Ay, bring your equipment on over here, and
33:22
Speaker 1: they started using it to execute straights. That's what I saw. Wow.
33:25
Speaker 1: I'm sure they're not proud of that part of their
33:27
Speaker 1: history of protecting animals from cruelty. I'm sure that they
33:31
Speaker 1: are not actually like please please stop, just keep moving
33:34
Speaker 1: on keep going, talk about Thomas Edison. So at the
33:37
Speaker 1: end of this uh and all these dogs, they they
33:41
Speaker 1: basically came to that conclusion that we talked about earlier
33:44
Speaker 1: was that electricity will instantly disrupt the heartbeat and the
33:48
Speaker 1: rhythm uh, and death will be instant and painless. And uh.
33:53
Speaker 1: New York passed a state law saying basically that this
33:57
Speaker 1: is the way forward for us. Yeah, and again this
34:00
Speaker 1: is like, this is long after the time when the
34:05
Speaker 1: two guys um Provost and Battelli had shown this is
34:10
Speaker 1: like the early I think that you could actually use
34:13
Speaker 1: electricity to restart somebody's heart. And then also now we
34:17
Speaker 1: know that actually electricity doesn't instantly kill you by causing
34:21
Speaker 1: a heart attack. It does the opposite. The heart becomes
34:24
Speaker 1: like goes into safe mode to protect itself, and um,
34:28
Speaker 1: you have to hit it again to make it spasm
34:31
Speaker 1: and go into fibrillation, because that's what fibrillation is. It's
34:34
Speaker 1: like an in um uh non rhythmic heartbeat to where
34:40
Speaker 1: you can't actually pump any blood out. That's a heart attack, right,
34:43
Speaker 1: or that's fibrillation, that's cardiac arrest. That's not what happens
34:47
Speaker 1: when you get hit with the first jolt of electricity.
34:50
Speaker 1: So I don't know if Fell and Southwick were just
34:52
Speaker 1: making this up or if it just happened that it
34:55
Speaker 1: did kill dogs like that or what. Maybe they were
34:58
Speaker 1: using a massive amount or maybe they we're using just
35:00
Speaker 1: the right level of amps. I don't know, but um,
35:03
Speaker 1: they definitely demonstrated that this was this was something that
35:07
Speaker 1: could be done. But it wasn't just them. Simultaneous to
35:10
Speaker 1: Southwick and Fell, who from everything I could tell, we're
35:13
Speaker 1: aside from the fact that they killed a lot of
35:15
Speaker 1: dogs with electricity, were legitimate um scientists who were doing
35:21
Speaker 1: this to find a humane alternative to hanging. There was
35:24
Speaker 1: another guy who was the opposite of legitimate, wasn't a
35:28
Speaker 1: scientist and was a fairly shaded character named Harold Brown. Yeah.
35:33
Speaker 1: So uh, off to the side. You know, fell in
35:36
Speaker 1: Southwick built the first actual chair. So just park that
35:40
Speaker 1: there for a moment and then we have to just
35:42
Speaker 1: pop a squat, take a seat and that no, don't
35:45
Speaker 1: sit there, sit in the other chair. Um, So we
35:51
Speaker 1: have to talk about the war of currents, which we've
35:53
Speaker 1: talked about on this. I think we did a whole
35:55
Speaker 1: podcast on this, right, Yeah, we did, like did did
35:59
Speaker 1: Nicola Tesla change the way we use electricity? Answer? Yes, yeah,
36:03
Speaker 1: so we don't need to go over all that again.
36:05
Speaker 1: But um, just very quickly the war of currents. There
36:08
Speaker 1: was a big war between uh, whether or not we're
36:10
Speaker 1: going to move forward as a nation with a C
36:12
Speaker 1: power or DC power. Uh. Thomas Edison UM wanted that
36:16
Speaker 1: DC power. That was he had invested heavily in that,
36:20
Speaker 1: so he was trying to make that one out. Uh.
36:22
Speaker 1: And then George Westinghouse, of course, on the other side,
36:25
Speaker 1: was working U had invested in a C power and
36:29
Speaker 1: Brown who you mentioned he actually worked for Edison? Is
36:32
Speaker 1: that right? Yes? But supposedly unbeknows he even testified under
36:36
Speaker 1: oath that he did not work for Edison when he
36:38
Speaker 1: very well, very much did and had for years by
36:41
Speaker 1: that time. How interesting. Yeah, yeah, who, here's a shade ball.
36:45
Speaker 1: And I the one thing that I can't figure out, Chuck,
36:48
Speaker 1: is whether he was truly a UM crusader against Westinghouse
36:53
Speaker 1: and a C power like he genuinely thought it was
36:56
Speaker 1: dangerous and then he fell in with Edison, or if
36:59
Speaker 1: he was in edis an operative from the outset. That's
37:01
Speaker 1: what I've not been able to establish, but he was
37:04
Speaker 1: definitely working for Edison secretly. Interesting, So the Electric Death
37:10
Speaker 1: Commission gets in touch with Edison, and then the Grabster
37:15
Speaker 1: put this together for us, and I thought, this is
37:16
Speaker 1: a very kind of great comparison. He said, you know,
37:20
Speaker 1: what happened next is sort of like if the government
37:23
Speaker 1: said to Pepsi, Hey, you guys are experts on soda, um,
37:28
Speaker 1: how how should we kill someone with a soda And
37:30
Speaker 1: Pepsi was like, here, we'll do lots of experiments that
37:34
Speaker 1: will prove to you that coca cola will kill somebody
37:37
Speaker 1: very easily. And that's basically what happened is is Harold Brown,
37:40
Speaker 1: working with Edison, did all these gruesome, uh public electrocutions
37:47
Speaker 1: to show how dangerous a C current was so they
37:51
Speaker 1: would adopt it for the electric chair, which would in turn,
37:55
Speaker 1: in his mind, give a C current a bad name.
37:58
Speaker 1: I mean, that's as underhanded as it gets. Like, if
38:00
Speaker 1: you are in competition and business, that's like Uber calling
38:04
Speaker 1: fake lift rides um when they started out, do you
38:08
Speaker 1: remember that? But this is way way worse. But it's
38:11
Speaker 1: still in the same wheelhouse. But but that's what that's
38:15
Speaker 1: what Edison was doing. He was like, oh yeah, totally.
38:17
Speaker 1: This is a great Apparently, he declined first that participate
38:20
Speaker 1: have anything to do with this Electric Death Commission, and
38:23
Speaker 1: then he was like, oh wait, yes, actually I have
38:25
Speaker 1: a great idea. I would like to be involved. I
38:27
Speaker 1: really I suggest that a C current be used. And
38:31
Speaker 1: he used Harold Brown to to just basically carry out
38:34
Speaker 1: this whole thing, so much so that Harold Brown managed
38:37
Speaker 1: to convince the Electric Death Commission that not only should
38:40
Speaker 1: a C current be used for the first electrocution in
38:45
Speaker 1: the state of New York, a Westinghouse generator should be
38:48
Speaker 1: used to generate that electrical current. And he tried to
38:51
Speaker 1: buy some generators from Westinghouse and they're like, uh, no, no,
38:55
Speaker 1: you can't, we know what you're gonna do with those.
38:57
Speaker 1: So he ended up buying second hand ones and that
39:00
Speaker 1: kind of sets the stage for the first execution, which,
39:03
Speaker 1: if you ask me, is a really good point to
39:05
Speaker 1: take our second break. So, Chuck, We're in Auburn State Prison.
39:38
Speaker 1: It's August of eighteen nine, and there's a guy named
39:42
Speaker 1: William Kemmler who was convicted of murdering his common law
39:45
Speaker 1: wife Tilly with an axe, and uh when he was caught,
39:50
Speaker 1: he apparently had done it in a drunken range. And
39:52
Speaker 1: I don't know if he felt remorse or guilt or
39:54
Speaker 1: was just bored with the whole thing, but he had
39:56
Speaker 1: a quote where he said something like, um, uh, yes,
40:00
Speaker 1: I I struck her with a hatchet. I intended to
40:02
Speaker 1: kill her. Um. The sooner I am hung, and it's
40:05
Speaker 1: over with the better hanged, hanged. I always get that
40:10
Speaker 1: wrong tonight, So the sooner I'm hanged, uh, and it's
40:15
Speaker 1: over with the better and uh. I guess he was
40:19
Speaker 1: not afraid of the noose. But when he found out
40:21
Speaker 1: that they were going to use electrocution and that he
40:24
Speaker 1: would be the first ever human being to be executed
40:27
Speaker 1: by the state with electric electricity, he was like whoa, whoa, whoa, wa, whoa,
40:32
Speaker 1: what are you talking about again? And started to file lawsuits.
40:35
Speaker 1: So he actually also became the first person to challenge
40:37
Speaker 1: the constitutionality of the electric chair as a means of execution. Yeah,
40:43
Speaker 1: that's kind of a crazy fact. I think the very
40:44
Speaker 1: first person to go to the electric chair was the
40:47
Speaker 1: first person to be like, I don't think this is right. Yeah,
40:50
Speaker 1: it's true. Uh, But the Supreme Court said no, no,
40:54
Speaker 1: They rolled against Kimbler and said it does not violate
40:58
Speaker 1: the eighth Amendment to the Constitution. Um, And he went,
41:02
Speaker 1: what about the excessive bail? And they went, I thought
41:05
Speaker 1: you were talking about cruel and unusual punishment, and he
41:08
Speaker 1: went out, whatever you want to hear. Uh. So his execution, uh,
41:13
Speaker 1: the very first one, was by all accounts botched pretty
41:17
Speaker 1: severely in and of itself. Yeah, so you remember how
41:21
Speaker 1: um uh what was his name? Harold Brown managed to
41:25
Speaker 1: get Westinghouse generators used for that first execution, but he
41:29
Speaker 1: had to buy secondhand ones. The first jolt of electricity
41:32
Speaker 1: that was sent through William Kemmeler to kill him only
41:35
Speaker 1: lasted for seventeen seconds because one of the belts started
41:38
Speaker 1: to fall off the generator, so they had to stop
41:42
Speaker 1: before it had killed him. And by all accounts, he
41:44
Speaker 1: was sitting there struggling with life left in him. And
41:48
Speaker 1: the New York Times reported that quote strong men fainted
41:51
Speaker 1: and felt like logs on the floor at the site.
41:55
Speaker 1: It was a terrible thing to see. And also if
41:58
Speaker 1: you look at the drawings of them of the execution
42:02
Speaker 1: that we're used in the newspapers of the day, he's
42:05
Speaker 1: just sitting there in a chair surrounded by people like
42:07
Speaker 1: Harold Brown and George Fell and Alfred Southwick, and then
42:11
Speaker 1: the witnesses are all just milling around, like standing around
42:14
Speaker 1: watching them, like they're watching some guy like in a
42:16
Speaker 1: drinking contest or something, and that's how he was executed.
42:20
Speaker 1: So I would imagine, like, you know, it's it would
42:23
Speaker 1: be bad enough to be a witness to an execution
42:25
Speaker 1: today where it's real sterile in the it's really um
42:29
Speaker 1: clinical and there's a glass glass thick glass window between
42:33
Speaker 1: you and the curtain. Comes down to standing in the
42:35
Speaker 1: same room with somebody who's being electrocuted just a few
42:39
Speaker 1: feet away. That's gotta be that's gotta make it even worse,
42:42
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, And so you know, clearly not a
42:46
Speaker 1: more humane way after this first execution, but they press
42:50
Speaker 1: forward because um and I think Ed points out very
42:53
Speaker 1: astutely that there was something about the fact that it
42:57
Speaker 1: was a use of technology that wasn't tie a rope
43:01
Speaker 1: around someone's neck or just put a bullet in their
43:03
Speaker 1: head that it seemed less offensive to the public at large.
43:08
Speaker 1: I think, um, because it's not the kind of thing
43:11
Speaker 1: like they didn't if you're not a witness to it
43:14
Speaker 1: and you just read about something in the paper, it
43:16
Speaker 1: may seem like there is a um an acceptable moral
43:21
Speaker 1: distance because of this technology, right right, right, So like hanging,
43:25
Speaker 1: when hanging came when hanging was under fire for you know,
43:28
Speaker 1: not being humane, new technology that kind of put more
43:31
Speaker 1: distance between you, that just seem more advanced. And because
43:35
Speaker 1: it was more advanced in this kind of technocratic way
43:38
Speaker 1: of thinking, it was more humane, it was more high tech,
43:42
Speaker 1: so it must just be better. That was kind of
43:45
Speaker 1: how the electric chair came to replace hanging. But even
43:47
Speaker 1: though that first one was simply botched, the idea of
43:51
Speaker 1: it just made it. It made it allowed it to spread.
43:54
Speaker 1: And from like all not all the accounts, but most
43:57
Speaker 1: of the accounts that I saw um of that first execution,
44:01
Speaker 1: We're just like, this is terrible, this is gruesome. This
44:03
Speaker 1: will probably never happen again. And then other states were like, oh,
44:07
Speaker 1: you cook him with electricity, huh, Like I like that idea,
44:10
Speaker 1: Let me try that too, And it spread fairly quickly
44:13
Speaker 1: and became far and away the dominant method of execution
44:16
Speaker 1: in the United States in the twentieth century. Yeah, and
44:20
Speaker 1: there have been many many and you know, at the
44:23
Speaker 1: end we'll talk about some some more botched executions. But UM,
44:27
Speaker 1: I don't think there are any more UM legendary than
44:31
Speaker 1: Willie Francis in nineteen UM. He was executed in Louisiana
44:36
Speaker 1: for a murderer that uh. To call his trial UM
44:40
Speaker 1: questionable and suspect is like an understatement. UM. It seems
44:44
Speaker 1: like this guy was just totally railroaded. UM. And you
44:47
Speaker 1: mentioned gruesome girty earlier. That was the name of the
44:50
Speaker 1: electric chair in Louisiana in this case for his execution.
44:54
Speaker 1: It was set up by a drunk prison guard UM
44:58
Speaker 1: who apparently didn't add it up correctly. It was total
45:01
Speaker 1: human heir. So he goes down in history, as to
45:05
Speaker 1: my knowledge, the only person who has ever been executed
45:08
Speaker 1: uh technically twice or because he survived his botched execution
45:15
Speaker 1: such that he lived completely through it, they couldn't use
45:19
Speaker 1: the chair anymore and he actually lived to fight to say, hey,
45:26
Speaker 1: you can't do this again, because that is totally that
45:29
Speaker 1: is the definition of cruel and unusual. You tried to
45:32
Speaker 1: kill me once and it didn't work, and I'm here
45:35
Speaker 1: in court again and the Supreme Court said, now, sorry,
45:38
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to go to the chair again. And't
45:41
Speaker 1: the craziest thing you've ever heard crazy. So so the
45:45
Speaker 1: guy this wasn't like the guys survived and they're like, quick, quick,
45:49
Speaker 1: throw the switch again. He's still alive. We need to
45:51
Speaker 1: we need to you know, finish the job or whatever
45:54
Speaker 1: you want to call it. This was the electric chairs
45:57
Speaker 1: broke after going through a full execution. The guy still
46:00
Speaker 1: alive and lives for another year before they're like, all right,
46:03
Speaker 1: we fix the electric chair. It's time for you to
46:05
Speaker 1: die again. And they did it twice in that second time.
46:08
Speaker 1: That was that. But he um, that's that is that's
46:12
Speaker 1: the definition of cruel and unusual. I agree with you entirely. Yeah.
46:16
Speaker 1: And the interesting thing though is if you look, there
46:19
Speaker 1: were statistics put together about four or five years ago
46:22
Speaker 1: that shows that the electric chair, and you know, like
46:25
Speaker 1: you said, we did one on lethal injection UM that
46:28
Speaker 1: starting in the late seventies kind of became UM one
46:31
Speaker 1: of the more preferred choices for most states. But uh,
46:35
Speaker 1: as far as what you would consider botch percentage UM,
46:40
Speaker 1: the electric chair kind of leads the way except for
46:42
Speaker 1: the firing squad UM. Only one point nine to electrocutions
46:47
Speaker 1: are UM categorized as botched, compared to seven point one
46:51
Speaker 1: two percent for lethal injection. Yeah, which is that's a
46:55
Speaker 1: pretty pretty good track record comparatively speaking, I guess. But
47:00
Speaker 1: then there's a really big point here too. It's like,
47:03
Speaker 1: um in a botched lethal injection, at least from the
47:07
Speaker 1: perspective of the witnesses, that's vastly preferred to a botched
47:12
Speaker 1: electrocution where the person catches fire something like that. But
47:18
Speaker 1: here's the problem with all of these, with comparing like
47:21
Speaker 1: botch nous and what's preferred and all that one's much
47:24
Speaker 1: more that's a much more tasteful botched execution than this one.
47:27
Speaker 1: We because the medical profession has said, well, we don't
47:31
Speaker 1: have anything to do with this, Like yeah, doctor can
47:33
Speaker 1: be present to pronounce the person dead, but the doctor
47:35
Speaker 1: is not going to insist, assist in any way, shape
47:38
Speaker 1: or form and still keep the medical license. We we
47:41
Speaker 1: cause no harm, so we can't assist in executions. Right.
47:45
Speaker 1: Our understanding of execution is coming. It's like anecdotal, like
47:50
Speaker 1: how to carry out an execution? What protocol you should use,
47:53
Speaker 1: Like it's it's done by the people who are doing
47:56
Speaker 1: this almost through trial and error or from people's day
48:00
Speaker 1: to where they executed dogs a hundreds something years ago. Um,
48:05
Speaker 1: and that was what was used to kill you know, hundreds,
48:08
Speaker 1: if not a thousand plus humans in actually, yeah, probably
48:12
Speaker 1: more than thousands humans in the United States in the
48:15
Speaker 1: twentieth century. Um. The thing is this chuck. So, so
48:20
Speaker 1: you can stop there pretty easily and just say like, so,
48:23
Speaker 1: we we don't know if it was ever humane. We
48:25
Speaker 1: don't know if it does caused instant death people catch
48:27
Speaker 1: on fire or whatever. But you actually we've never known
48:32
Speaker 1: whether it does cause instant death because when you when
48:35
Speaker 1: you are autopsied after your execution, your brain is cooked,
48:39
Speaker 1: um like invariably, that's one of the by products of
48:44
Speaker 1: uh a electrocution. Your brain gets cooked basically through and through.
48:49
Speaker 1: It can be like a hundred and twenty degrees fahrenheit
48:52
Speaker 1: at autopsy. Still, you know, um, dozens of minutes or
48:56
Speaker 1: an hour or so later, when your brain is removed,
48:59
Speaker 1: it's still that right. So we don't actually know if
49:03
Speaker 1: the electric chair isn't humane or isn't painless, We don't
49:07
Speaker 1: really know. Um. But then at the same time, an
49:11
Speaker 1: execution and whether it's tasteful or appears humane, it's it's yes,
49:15
Speaker 1: it's meant to be that way for the the inmate.
49:19
Speaker 1: But it really is meant to be that way for
49:21
Speaker 1: society because it has to be palatable and tasteful for society,
49:25
Speaker 1: or else society is gonna be like, no, we can't
49:26
Speaker 1: do that anymore, like we did with hanging. And that
49:29
Speaker 1: is what happened actually with execution. Because of some botched
49:32
Speaker 1: executions in Florida in the nineties, UM, society said like,
49:37
Speaker 1: we've got to find another way. I've heard about this
49:39
Speaker 1: lethal injection thing. Let's try that instead. Yeah, I mean,
49:42
Speaker 1: should we talk about some of these uh awful stories? Yeah,
49:47
Speaker 1: so let me see here UM October in Indiana, UM
49:55
Speaker 1: electrocution of William van Diver uh first administrat volts. He
50:01
Speaker 1: was still breathing. The execution took a total of five
50:05
Speaker 1: volts I'm sorry, five jolts uh in seventeen minutes UM.
50:10
Speaker 1: The smell of smoke of hair and flesh burning. The
50:13
Speaker 1: Department of Corrections said this quote the execution did not
50:17
Speaker 1: go according to plan. Yeah, they like to be droll.
50:21
Speaker 1: It sounds like how about Horace Franklin Duncan's Jr. Nine
50:27
Speaker 1: in Alabama, UM. Two jolts of electricity nine minutes apart um.
50:32
Speaker 1: The first jolt failed to kill him, and the captain
50:36
Speaker 1: of the prison guard opened the door to the witness
50:37
Speaker 1: room and said, I think we've got the jack's on wrong. Uh.
50:42
Speaker 1: They reconnect the cables correctly and death was pronounced nineteen
50:46
Speaker 1: minutes after the first charge. But the first charge, it's
50:49
Speaker 1: not like it wasn't painful. If it was probably more
50:53
Speaker 1: painful than the second one because the second one produced death.
50:56
Speaker 1: But um, it was not. It couldn't possibly produce the
51:00
Speaker 1: kind of voltage that would kill a person. It was
51:02
Speaker 1: just basically torture, like a little a little torture starter
51:06
Speaker 1: like they have a t g I Fridays. And then
51:08
Speaker 1: that was followed by the entree, which was death, um,
51:12
Speaker 1: which is not supposed to happen. So again, if you'll
51:15
Speaker 1: kind of harken back to um, the all these news
51:18
Speaker 1: stories coming out like, oh, this is not how we're
51:21
Speaker 1: supposed to be executing people. What's going on? This is
51:24
Speaker 1: starting to go on in the eighties and then early
51:26
Speaker 1: nineties around the United States with with electrocution. Yeah, this
51:31
Speaker 1: one in Georgia, Alpha otis stevens Um. The first charge
51:36
Speaker 1: failed to kill him. He struggled to breathe for eight minutes. Uh,
51:39
Speaker 1: and they carried out the second charge. After the first
51:43
Speaker 1: two minute power surge, there was a six minute pause
51:45
Speaker 1: so his body could cool enough so physicians could examine him.
51:49
Speaker 1: And in that six minute period he took twenty three breaths,
51:53
Speaker 1: which if you do the math, you know, and think
51:55
Speaker 1: about how intermittent those breaths are. Uh. And then the
51:59
Speaker 1: quote from the or your prison official was Stevens was
52:02
Speaker 1: just not a conductor of electricity. But how about that?
52:06
Speaker 1: And then there were three chuck, There were three um
52:09
Speaker 1: in Florida that really kind of galvanized public opinion against electrocutions.
52:13
Speaker 1: Joseph or Jesse Joseph Tafaraoh, Pedro Medina and a guy
52:18
Speaker 1: named Allan Lee Davis and Ta. Pharaoh and Medina both
52:21
Speaker 1: caught on fire. Um I think to Pharaoh's head had
52:24
Speaker 1: like six inch flames shooting out from under the crown
52:28
Speaker 1: um under the electrode on his head, and um Medina
52:32
Speaker 1: had like a foot flames and like so much that
52:35
Speaker 1: his whole he was just charred. His head was charred
52:37
Speaker 1: during the execution. Again, we don't know that he actually suffered,
52:41
Speaker 1: but that's not what the public wants to see or
52:42
Speaker 1: read about. When we're when we leave it to the
52:45
Speaker 1: state to execute people humanely, that's not supposed to happen.
52:48
Speaker 1: And then Alan Lee Davis very famously had photographs taken
52:52
Speaker 1: of him after his execution, and his face seems to
52:56
Speaker 1: be very clearly contorted in in a look of pain.
52:59
Speaker 1: He was a very big man, like pounds and a
53:02
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of blood loss. It looks like it came
53:04
Speaker 1: out of his mouth and maybe even his chest, but
53:07
Speaker 1: they later determined that it was um, it came out
53:10
Speaker 1: of his nose. Um. But there's just a lot of blood.
53:13
Speaker 1: And they also said, like, well, the guy was on
53:15
Speaker 1: blood thinners, so this is pretty clear has happened, but
53:18
Speaker 1: it doesn't really mean anything. He got a nosebleed during
53:20
Speaker 1: the electrocution, and the public said, we don't care. That's
53:24
Speaker 1: number three on in Florida alone. Go find something else.
53:27
Speaker 1: Let's try this lethal injection thing. Yeah. Um, I did ah,
53:33
Speaker 1: I did a list. Actually, I think Nebraska in two
53:36
Speaker 1: thousand and eight was the last state to UH stop
53:39
Speaker 1: using the electric chair as their primary source. UM. But
53:43
Speaker 1: I was curious, like, which state just has executed the
53:46
Speaker 1: most people period by whatever means? And um, Texas leads
53:52
Speaker 1: away what Uh, they have two stats since nineteen thirty
53:57
Speaker 1: and since nineteen seventy six, but Texas has executed eighteen
54:02
Speaker 1: hundred I'm sorry, eight hundred forty one people since nineteen thirty.
54:06
Speaker 1: George's number two actually with four d and thirty six,
54:09
Speaker 1: but since nineteen seventy six, um, Georgia has executed seventy
54:14
Speaker 1: four people to Texas is five hundred and sixty three.
54:18
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. And since seventy six, Virginia is actually
54:23
Speaker 1: second and then Florida is third. Both have over a hundred.
54:28
Speaker 1: Would not have guessed Virginia Florida. I probably would have
54:31
Speaker 1: guessed Texas. I knew, but wow, that's a significant that's
54:35
Speaker 1: a that's a long gap between number one and two. Yeah,
54:39
Speaker 1: and Texas has always you know, been criticized as uh
54:43
Speaker 1: death penalty. Um happy, I would say that's a fair characterization.
54:49
Speaker 1: Sadly prove us wrong in Texas, you can't do it? Yeah,
54:53
Speaker 1: um so. So remember we said that everybody was like, no,
54:57
Speaker 1: no more electrocutions, let's find something else. When they went
55:00
Speaker 1: to the lethal injection, which is supposedly more humane. I
55:04
Speaker 1: was reading this article by a law professor named Austin
55:07
Speaker 1: Austin Surat who basically said, you know, those two two
55:11
Speaker 1: prisoners in Tennessee in December of two thousand eighteen alone
55:15
Speaker 1: opted for the electric chair because they didn't have faith
55:18
Speaker 1: that UM lethal injection was going to be less painful
55:22
Speaker 1: or less prolonged. They wanted the electric chair instead, and
55:26
Speaker 1: that up to this point, every time we've changed UM
55:30
Speaker 1: what our method of execution is, it's been technologically speaking,
55:35
Speaker 1: socially speaking, a step forward in that in that kind
55:39
Speaker 1: of area, and that going back to the electric chair
55:42
Speaker 1: is a huge step backwards. Into him, it represents a
55:45
Speaker 1: major crisis in the legitimacy of the death penalty. And
55:50
Speaker 1: he was, I guess kind of wondering without saying it, like,
55:53
Speaker 1: is this is this the beginning of the end for
55:54
Speaker 1: the death penalty in the United States? Again? Interesting, I
55:59
Speaker 1: thought so too. But that's electric chairs. You can buy one,
56:03
Speaker 1: or you could. I think it's sold. One sold in
56:05
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve. Tennessee's old Sparky sold in two thousand twelve,
56:09
Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken, Yeah, on an online auction for
56:12
Speaker 1: twenty five thousand dollars. Marilyn Manson, I don't know. I
56:17
Speaker 1: heard it was being put in a museum in Tennessee,
56:19
Speaker 1: so probably not um. But that's electric chairs. Like I said, everybody,
56:25
Speaker 1: and if you want to know more about them, you
56:27
Speaker 1: can go look around the internet. You can also just
56:30
Speaker 1: leave this behind forever. It will kind of be nice
56:32
Speaker 1: to shed this one because it was some grim research.
56:36
Speaker 1: And since I say sorry for putting us through this one, chuck,
56:39
Speaker 1: this is a Josh pick everybody, since I mean, like
56:42
Speaker 1: halfway through great research to today, I was like, god, man,
56:45
Speaker 1: I just feel just bad right now, you know. And
56:49
Speaker 1: then he had a panini and everything was okay. Yeah,
56:53
Speaker 1: it was a good panini for sure. Uh. Well, since
56:56
Speaker 1: we said panini, it's time for listener mail. I'm curious
57:01
Speaker 1: if you're gonna this is the one, Josh, but here
57:04
Speaker 1: we go. Hey, guys, I just recently I listened to
57:07
Speaker 1: the started listening to podcasts because apparently I'm a luddite,
57:12
Speaker 1: so I've been waiting my way through the old episodes.
57:15
Speaker 1: I listened to the one on saunas uh, and I
57:17
Speaker 1: wanted to let you know there is a holiday inn
57:20
Speaker 1: just outside of Toledo in Perrysburg. Did you see this email? Yeah?
57:26
Speaker 1: I did, I responded, Actually, okay, well, I can't wait
57:29
Speaker 1: to hear what happened. Um. It's it's called the holiday
57:31
Speaker 1: in French Quarter, which used to be a holid dome
57:35
Speaker 1: and to which it is possible to have or was
57:38
Speaker 1: possible to have a pool membership. In addition to three
57:40
Speaker 1: pools in a large hot tub, the hotel has a
57:42
Speaker 1: large sauna and I am positive that this is the
57:46
Speaker 1: holiday end that Josh's dad took him to when he
57:49
Speaker 1: was a kid, staple for over fifty years. Unfortunately, the
57:52
Speaker 1: hotel will be closing at the end of the month
57:53
Speaker 1: after losing its holiday in flag to a new build
57:56
Speaker 1: that is from Deanna Pollen. Is that the one? No,
58:00
Speaker 1: it's not, but my family here. My family used to
58:05
Speaker 1: go on staycations at that French Quarter holiday. It was
58:10
Speaker 1: like two towns over and it was like it was
58:13
Speaker 1: pretty awesome when you were a kid. I think she's
58:15
Speaker 1: kind of underselling at the three pools in the hot tub.
58:18
Speaker 1: Like the pools were meandering and went all over the place.
58:20
Speaker 1: They were like bridges over them, so you swam under bridges.
58:24
Speaker 1: They would go out, so they were like indoor outdoor pools.
58:26
Speaker 1: It was pretty awesome. But my um pool membership and
58:30
Speaker 1: saw a membership was at the Holiday Inn near Southwick Mall,
58:34
Speaker 1: which that Holiday Inn is now a um an assisted
58:38
Speaker 1: living tower, I believe, but for a little while in
58:41
Speaker 1: between being a holiday Inn and being an assisted living tower,
58:44
Speaker 1: it was abandoned and one of the coolest, like photos
58:47
Speaker 1: that she can look at her abandoned hotels and somebody
58:49
Speaker 1: went to the trouble of getting photos inside this abandoned
58:53
Speaker 1: holiday and it's really cool, including the pool. So just
58:56
Speaker 1: look up I think abandoned holiday in Toledo. I O
59:00
Speaker 1: Southwick Mall. Maybe you know, probably bring it up. Well,
59:03
Speaker 1: maybe you'll end up there one day, bring it full circle. Yeah.
59:06
Speaker 1: I was depressed of the French Quarters going under though.
59:08
Speaker 1: That was a great, great little place. I was talking
59:11
Speaker 1: to UM. I was like, oh, man, did I ever
59:13
Speaker 1: tell you about my family staying at the French Course.
59:15
Speaker 1: She's like, yes, you told me your family went on
59:17
Speaker 1: vacation two towns over a holiday and I was like, yeah,
59:22
Speaker 1: it was great though. I think the best one was
59:24
Speaker 1: the pool that was in the Highway median. What was
59:27
Speaker 1: that one? I just thought that was like the fourth pool.
59:31
Speaker 1: Right to use it your own risk pool. It was disconnected,
59:34
Speaker 1: you'd run like heck to get to it. That's right. Uh, well, Chuck,
59:39
Speaker 1: you got anything else? Well, if you want to get
59:42
Speaker 1: in touch with this to let us know about some
59:44
Speaker 1: part of my childhood being shut down forever, we love
59:46
Speaker 1: hearing about that kind of stuff. You can go to
59:49
Speaker 1: stuff you Should Know dot com and look for our
59:51
Speaker 1: social links, and you can also send us an email
59:54
Speaker 1: to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. Stuff
1:00:00
Speaker 1: you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How
1:00:02
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit
1:00:05
Speaker 1: the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
1:00:08
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.