Most of the electrocutions were carried out in the stronghold of democratic values, USA. Liberals avoid this example when you point out to them that in America there is the death penalty, in contrast to Russia. And the types of this execution are not at all humane and even painful. But in the Russian Federation, the tyrant president for some reason, has not yet lifted the moratorium.
Let's look at the emergence and application of the type of execution, in the electric chair.
The author of the idea of the electric chair as a method of execution was the famous inventor Thomas Edison. He came to this idea in a very non-trivial way.
Then, at the end of the century, he grappled with the second pillar of the industrial revolution - Westinghouse. He waged the so-called war of currents with him, Westinghouse was a supporter of alternating current, like the inventor Nikola Tesla, who left Edison. And Edison promoted the ideas of the promising use of DC generators. At the end of the century, the gods of the war of currents stubbornly leaned towards alternating current as the basis of industry.
But Edison did not give up.
Using the blackest PR, Edison proposed to kill criminals with Westinghouse alternating current, claiming that its constant current is safer. The idea found support, and the US correctional system took over the concept of carrying out death sentences by means of an electric device, which was called an "electric chair."
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There was little left to do - to design an execution machine. An ordinary electrician at the Auburn Correctional Facility, located in the aforementioned state, assembled the first working example of a new brain burner for human meat in 1890.
And since everyone was eager to try out the new high-tech hand of justice, in the summer of the same year, the first lucky man, who finished his mistress out of place with an ax, was seated on an uncomfortable massive chair, to which high-voltage wires were drawn.
A scoundrel named William Kemmler was not at all imbued with the solemnity of the moment and spoiled all the reporting indicators according to a new method - contrary to the assurances of supporters of electrification of furniture, the killer survived after turning the switch. Two kilovolts passed through the body of the suicide bomber made him smoke, defecate and make inarticulate sounds, but they could not kill the condemned man.
On August 6, 1890, the small town of Auburn (New York State) thundered throughout the country. In a local prison, the death sentence was carried out over German-American William Kemmler. Four months earlier, Kemmler, in a drunken stupor, hacked his partner to death with an ax. He became the first person to experience the effects of the electric chair. Kemmler's lawyers filed an appeal, arguing that the client would face "cruel and unusual punishment." AC millionaire George Westinghouse hired the best lawyers to defend the killer, but it failed, in part because of the Thomas Edison lobby, who wanted to prove that alternating current was far more dangerous than direct current, which he was betting on.
The execution was scheduled for 6 am. In the room where Kemmler was executed, a huge number of observers, from jailers to reporters, crammed. The offender was given the last word, and he said: “Gentlemen, I wish you good luck in this world. Hope I go to a better place. Do not believe the newspapers, they wrote a lot of lies about me."
The first attempt to kill Kemmler quickly and painlessly failed: the drunken alcoholic showed signs of life even after an electric current was passed through him for 17 seconds. It is difficult to imagine how long this person could live if he led a healthy lifestyle. Despite years of drunkenness, Kemmler had an incredibly healthy heart.
The voltage was increased to 2000 volts, but the power supply needed to be recharged. While it was being produced, the brutally burned criminal moaned loudly. The second electric shock lasted more than a minute to be sure. The sight was terrible: the room was filled with the smell of burning flesh, smoke poured from the killer's head. After the execution, the millionaire Westinghouse said: "It would be better if they used an ax."
On the second attempt, the bastard was roasted to death, to which the biassed journalists present reacted with headlines in their articles - "The executed did not hurt at all!" Westinghouse himself, who forbade his contractors to sell generators produced by his company to correctional facilities, commented on the "field tests" of the electric gas chamber with the words - "It would be more humane to hack the poor fellow with an ax!"
According to other information, the killer of President McKinley, an anarchist of Polish origin, Leon Frank Czolgosh, happened to become the first official in the electric chair. Details of his execution have not survived.
Tests on humans have proved that the main reason for which all the fuss was started - the transience and painlessness of the execution - was in great doubt.
But it should be noted that in comparison with other types of executions, the entertainment of the procedure has certainly increased.
We saw a lot in the film "Green Mile". But you can repeat it - imagine: in the middle of a gloomy room behind a panoramic glass (and sometimes just in a hall with spectators) there is a destructive huge stool with a high back, legs and armrests of which gleam with fixing straps and silver “contact spots” for better conductivity. The electric chair is crowned with a metal cap with a spark gap on the top of the head, which was placed on a specially shaved crown of the suicide bomber. A sponge soaked in a saline solution was usually placed under the cap to improve conductivity. Massive wires from electric coils ran to the monstrous-looking chair.
The condemned poor man is killed by passing a current of up to 5 amperes and a voltage of up to 2700 volts from his ankles to his head. Alas, such characteristics of the network were not always guaranteed to kill the sentenced person, but they did not dare to increase them in order to prevent the body from burning.
Considering the peculiarity of the effect of a strong current on the human body, in which cardiac fibrillation is disturbed and a suicide bomber dies from cardiac arrest, it would be strange to assume that this method of execution would be more humane than others.
There are plenty of confirmations of the imperfection of the chosen method of carrying out the death sentence in history - out of more than four thousand people who sat down on the "old smokehouse", and this is how prisoners in America called the miracle chair, there were up to a dozen documented cases when the hero of the occasion was burnt ankles to the contact plates or the head and even the chest exploded from a sharp convulsive contraction of the heart and blood vessels.
There were cases when a prisoner broke his legs fastened to a chair under the influence of a discharge. At the same time, the death of the convict did not occur instantly with such a fierce resistance of his body to destructive volts. After each execution, the executioners had to thoroughly ventilate the room from the smell of burnt human flesh and often peel off the contact plates from the skin burnt to them.
It is worth noting that the popularity of the electric chair has been steadily declining in the past twenty years, giving way to the death penalty. Who knows if the next "Edison" will soon offer some new progressive method of punishing the "suicide bombers" - sending consciousness into virtual reality or deep cryogenic freezing of the villain?
On January 16, 2013, in the US state of Virginia, inmate Robert Gleeson finally sat down on the electric chair. To obtain this favor, the convict had to kill two inmates with a difference of a year. The offender warned: if life imprisonment is not replaced with the death penalty, he will continue to kill. Before receiving the longed-for electric shock, Gleason used his right to the last word and uttered a single phrase: "Kiss my ass."
This execution was the last in 125 years, during which the electric chair was used as a murder weapon. And although many consider the "yellow mother", or "old smokehouse" (as the electric chair is lovingly called in the underworld), an inhuman and cruel means, those sentenced to capital punishment often prefer it to other types of reprisal, lethal injection, execution, hanging, gas camera. Despite its disadvantages, it is considered the least painful type of mortification. Although at first this could not be said about him.
Years passed before the "old smokehouse" started working like clockwork. The current murder weapon is designed in such a way that it reliably fixes the body during the execution. The chair itself is made of material that does not conduct current, the voltage goes exclusively through the body of the condemned, stopping the heart and causing respiratory paralysis. Before the execution, the top of the attacker's head is shaved so that the current from a special helmet reaches the ankles faster, where the second contact is fixed. In order to ensure minimal resistance to contact with the head in the helmet and to minimize pain, a sponge soaked in saline is placed on the head. Also, a hood is put on the suicide bomber's head or his eyes are glued: sometimes the eyes burst or jump out of their sockets from overexertion. The arms, torso and legs are tied to the chair with straps.
The current is cut in twice for one minute with a break of ten seconds. Such an execution usually destroys the body instantly. The convict's skin and internal organs become charred, sometimes urination, vomiting, and defecation occur. And no matter how "yellow mother" is brought to perfection, there is no escape from the smell of burnt meat. There were cases when the head of the unfortunate person literally exploded. And yet, in most cases, the executed dies within one minute.
But sometimes the system crashes. William Wendiver was electrocuted five times in Indiana in 1985. He ended up dying for 17 minutes. Now in the United States, if a convict survives after the third minute discharge, he receives a pardon.
Usually several executioners carry out the sentence. They push the current switches simultaneously on a signal. However, none of them knows which switch is energized. This trick was invented to clear the conscience of the executors of the sentence: none of them ever knows who exactly pressed the switch with the current. The same scheme operates in the United States during the execution of a convict. Several people shoot at the condemned person at once, but none of them knows who has a gun loaded with blank cartridges, who has live ammunition.
The Americans believe that this is how they act humanely towards the convict. In general, they did their best to alleviate the fate of the condemned. So, before being executed, a criminal can order for himself whatever he wants for breakfast. The dying man's last wish must be fulfilled, even if he demands caviar with champagne. One of the most famous American criminals, the serial killer, sex maniac and necrophile Theodore Bundy, nicknamed the Ripper, ordered steak, eggs, potato cutlets, toast with butter and jelly, milk and juice for breakfast. The last word is another privilege of the executed.
Dentist Albert Southwick from Buffalo, New York is believed to be the inventor of the "old smokehouse". He once accidentally witnessed the death of a Buffalo resident when he touched the bare wires of an electric generator in a city power plant and died, Southwick thought, almost instantly and painlessly.
This gave the dentist the idea that execution with electricity could be a good alternative to hanging. To verify this, Southwick began to experiment on animals. Armed with his own scientific work, Southwick after a while went to his influential friend Senator David Macmillan. Having laid out charts and tables in front of him, the dentist was able to convince a friend of the undeniable merits of such a murder weapon.
The senator was a supporter of the death penalty, and the idea came to his liking. Macmillan reported the innovation to the governor of New York, and in 1886 a special commission was formed to agree with the dentist's arguments. This is how the electric chair appeared, which eventually became the symbol of the United States.
Since then, more than 4.3 thousand people have been executed in America in a similar way. Who hasn't been in the electric chair! Women, men, old people, teenagers, gangsters, spies, maniacs, murderers … Churchill even wanted to put Adolf Hitler on him on Trafalgar Square, but he was not lucky, the Fuhrer chose to kill himself.
The first woman victim of the "old smokehouse" was a certain Martha Place. She was put on the electric chair for killing her stepdaughter. A special case when two criminals were sent to the “yellow mother” at once by the married couple Rosenberg. The communists Julius and Ethel were executed for espionage in favor of the USSR: they worked for Soviet intelligence and transmitted secret information about the atomic bomb. In defense of the spouses, a whole campaign was launched, in which not only outstanding Soviet figures participated, but also such great people as Albert Einstein and Thomas Mann. Did not help.
Also noteworthy is the case of the execution of 16-year-old African American Willie Francis. He was sent to the electric chair for the murder of a pharmacist. But when the switch was turned on, Willie yelled like a chop: "Turn this thing off, I'm frying." After the examination, it turned out that one of the contacts was damaged in the chair. The lawyers insisted on pardoning the teenager, but the sentence was still carried out.
The electric chair is now used in eight states in America. Most states have reverted to lethal injection as a more humane method of execution. Although knowledgeable people argue that the electric chair is simply very expensive to operate, and Americans know how to count money.