Morris tribune. [volume] (Morris, Minn.) 1880-2000, 1884-03-05
SCIENTIFIC EXECUTION.
The Use OF Electricity I'm Executing
the Death Penalty on Criminals.

[London Telegraph
Society is revenged upon the convict in his
expectancy of death. The manner of it does
not probably affect him in the least. But it
is while he is waiting for the hand to strike
him that the man who can not be forgiven
on this side of the grave pays to his kind the
penalty of his crime, and it matters not
lot whether the hand holds a rifle, an ak, or a
rope. And it is the knowledge of the fact
that the apprehension of his fate is the real
punishment of the assassin that is perpetually
leading the thoughtful to discuss the question
of merciful forms of execution. The rifle
is a bungling instrument at best, for how are
we to steady the hands and eyes OF the
men who step out at the word of corporal
to shoot down comrade by word OF COM
mands The ak again, as history tells
us, loses its edge in the grasp of sympathetic
executioner; and, though we can subsldlze
the hands of men to strike the blow, what
hire can we give to hearts that they shall
cease to beat pitifully, and so unnerve the
arms that are already in our pays The rope,
too has been proved again and again, even
in the congenial hands of the dead hangman,
a laundering means of torture 1t catches
upon elbows, slackens in the wrong places, or
breaks when an old cord is used or the STRAIN
has been wrongly calculated. No WONDER
therefore, that humanity, scandalized at such
mishaps, should still cast about for some
other means of fulfilling the last demands OF
justice
Nor surely should science be unable to pro-
vide the means. For, apart from the various
methods which commend themselves to spec
ialists, there are others whereby instantane-
GUS death can be assured. We might cite, for
example, execution by lightning, which cleo
tricity seems to have placed within our power.
When the writer of the "Coming Race" i'm
agined the wonders of 'svril," and showed US
the executioners of the Ana destroying the
doomed by a touch of the terrible staff, he
may really have been pointing out, as he
does in so many other instances, drectlon
in which science has yet to work great re-
form, since in the magnetic current we
have undoubtedly a life-taklng weapon
that is quite as formidable as vr1L
There could be no bungling, no chance of
the nerves giving way, for death would fol
low the completion of the circuit as COM
pletely and swiftly as under lightning
flash, and thus, without any of the dreadful
accessories now attending public executions,
Justice would be satisfied and the last penalty
paid. The suggestions, at all events, are worth
consideration in those high quarters where
such serious matters are settled, and we put
it before them as a possible mode of rapid
punishment which, admitting of few chances
of failure, would spare the shock now some
times inflicted on public feelings How and
by what means the mysterious potency
could be employed, if at all, remains fol
electricians to decide; but enough is already
known to suggest hope that the rope as an
instrument of execution may before very
long be disused, even if Marwood is not to be
the last of our common hangmen.