Alabama prison officials contend that death in the electric chair is almost painless and immediate. The court last year agreed to review Florida's use of the electric chair after opponents cited several examples of what they called botched executions involving blood, sparks and fire. In July, Allen Lee Davis bled from the nose onto his white burial shirt as he was put to death, a photo of which was an exhibit to the case. But the issue became moot when Florida added lethal injection as an option. This week Terry Melvin Sims became the first Florida prisoner to die by lethal injection.
Electrocution is the sole means of execution in Alabama, Georgia and Nebraska.
Legislators in Alabama and Georgia are trying to avoid future challenges to the electric chair by adding lethal injection as an option. In Arizona last year, two condemned brothers, Karl and Walter LaGrand, chose the gas chamber over lethal injection, hoping to avoid execution by arguing gas was cruel and unusual punishment. A federal appeals court agreed with them, though it was quickly overturned. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the brothers, in choosing lethal gas over lethal injection, had waived their constitutional challenge to the gas chamber. Last February, Karl LaGrand, given a final-hour choice, elected lethal injection.