Omaha daily bee., 1888-01-18
EXECUTION BY ELECTRICITY,
Tho New York Legislature Receives
Report Regarding 1t.
ITS ADOPTION RECOMMENDED.
Capital Punishment by Shooting
Hanging. the Guillotinc or Gar.
rotte Strongly Condemned
By the Commission.
Quick and Painless shu ffiing or.

New York, Jan. IT. SPECIAL Telegram to
the BEE. The report of the commission APP
pointed by the legislature in 1856 to report
on the most humane and practical method
known to modern science of carrying into
effect the sentence of death in capital punish
mcnt was transmitted to the legislature yes-
tcrday 1t recommends the killing of cul-
prits by electricity The report says: "Your
commission have examined with care tho
accounts which exist of the various modes Of
capital punishment, which are or have been
used among different communities, with tho
result of feeling that the element of barbar-
Gus cruelty is SO prominent in each that no
existing mode can be considered as embody-
ing suggestions of an Improvement of that
now in use in this state Any change to
deserve commendation must be to IA system
substantially new, and the careful reader Of
IA description of those punshments cannot,
without prejudice arrive at different conclu-
sion. The chief objection to the guillotine
by the commission is that it is too bloody and
that it is associated with scenes of the French
revolution.
Garrotting is Objectionable because physl-
clans say that the fatal screw cannot be de-
pended upon to be so quick and certain in
operation that there may not be great agony
on the part of the criminal.
Shooting, if used in civil life, would bo
bloody in character and effects would some
times lack celebrity, would require n largo
number of executioners and wo uld be demol-
aliang because of its tendency to encourage
an untaught populacc to think lightly of tho
fatal use of fire arms.
The first objection to hanging is that tho
effect of giving stimulants TO the condemned
Immediately before execution is demoralizing.
The prevalence of the practice, commissions
ers say, is well known even in prisons where
prisoners are debarrcd from alcohol to drink.
When the anarchists were hanged in Chicago
recently, at the suggestion of the sheriff,
the county physician went to the con-
demned mems cells and asked them
to take stimulants. Engel drank two or
three times of port wine and Spies sparingly
of Rhine Wine One reason assigned for
giving liquor to criminal is that it is u
mercy to lessen his PERCEPTION of the pain of
dying. Another is that he an thus fortify
himself with unnatural strength for the or
deal. These reasons are Objectionable. AS
to giving liquor to stupefy prisoner, II pain
is part of the punishment then the prisoner
should suffer 1t.
Thomas A. Edison writes that dynamo
electric machinery which employs intcrmit-
tent currents would be the most suitable APP
paratus The passage of a current from
these machines through the body causes in-
stant death. The commissioners describe q
number of experiments with electricity in
destroying animals, witnessed in Buffalo by
one of the commissioners last year, for the
purpose of ascertaining the effect of an cleo
trio light current on the action of
the heart The borax of a chloro-
formed dog was opened so that the
lungs and heart could be seen in action by
forcing respiration, as in conscious life.
At the instant when the current passed
through the heart it became mass of quiver-
ing flesh. The ordinary conditions of dying
We're absent. 1t was noticed that an attempt
to breathe was made after the current was
passed through the dog This indicated that
the brain had not lost its susceptibility to i'm
pressions and shows that in execution the
current should be passed through the center
of the functions in the brain. The commits
sion recommends that u chair, with head
and "A foot rest, should be used, in which the
condemned man could be seated in a half
reclining position. One wire could be con-
nected with the head rest, which would be
metal plate The electric current could be
supplied by electric light wires. The COM
mission recommends that the date of eXecu-
tion be made uncertain so that the criminal
NAV not know what day he is to die, and that
the corpse 20 to the doctors or to IA namcloss
grave without religious rights and that news
papers be forbidden to describe the eX-
ecutlOn,