Iowa County democrat. [volume] (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1877-1938, 1901-04-04
DOES ELEcTRocUTIoN KILL?
Declared to be the Most Brutal Form
of Punishment.

Declared to be the Most Brutal Form
/ of Punishment.
The somewhat sensational question,
which was much mooted in the early
DAYS of execution by electricity, has
been revived of late. The early oppo-
sition to the electric chair seemed to
proceed mostly from the reluctance OF
certain electrical firms to allow tlelr
machines or their types OF current to
be used for producing death. A SINH
lar attitude might be expected on the
part of the manufacturers of some
widely advertised medicine II the
authorities should administer it in
large quantities to poison malefactors.
This opposition has slumbered for sew
eral years, but now the Electrical Re
view has returned to the charge. 1t
declares that, instead of being painless
and instantaneous, death by electricity
is really most brutal. In most cases,
it asserts, the condemned men are not
dead until the current has been final
ly turned off and they are taken from
the chair, and in many instances it
| charges that death has occurred, not
| by electric shock, but under the sur
geon's knife at the autopsy. Ii cites
| the recovery of men who haze GCen
shocked by powerful currents aaG who
have been apparently dead, to I owe
1 how unreliable the electric current
really is. Physical characteristics, too,
are different, and what may be instant
death to one may be a lingering death
to another. In arguing this point the
writer cites the cases of linemen who
have fallen against live wires Some
die instantly, while others are shocked
into insensibility and die from con-
tinuOus transmission of the current
through the body. In commenting on
all this the Columbus Dispatch of
February says:
Having delivered himself of this
declaration, the writer proceeds to
state that shooting, hanging, garoting
the guillotine and the sword are all
more certain and humane than the
electrical chair. He might have add
ed the Moorish bowstring Chinese
forms of getting rid of murderers and
others deemed worthy of death.
1T is strange how some people cling
to the idea that hanging is a humane
and speedy method of inflicting the
death penalty. Such believers in the
halter should have stood in the Ohio
penitentiary annex and at other scat
folds in Ohio and elsewhere and
watched a condemned man strange
| for 10 or 10 minutes, writing in hor-
rible COntortions, drawing up the legs
and struggling to free the hands. If
that is a humane punishment, Heaven
save the mark And what of the cases,
by no means rare, where the rope has
broken, allowing the victim to fall to
the ground, alive and fully conscious
of what was going on? What of the
bungling jobs of modifying, the min
utes that seem ages while the vic
tim is being bound and the rope ad-
justed? Has the writer ever witness
ed any of these siCkCning, marrow
freezing scenes in the death chamber?
He admits that many linemen are
killed instantly by the application of a
current to some parts of the body,
while others are rendered insensible.
II man is instantly rendered insen-
sible when the current is turned on.
does he suffer? And is the continu-
GUS application of the current inhu-
name? If, as an electrocution is CON
Quoted at the Ohio Penitentiary. it
only requires seconds to secure the
prisoner in the death-chair, where by
other modes it takes minutes; if the
instant the powerful current strikes
the victims brain he becomes insen-
sible-are these valid reasons for con
demning electroCution and returning
to the old rope-strangulation mode of
torture? SO far as the condemned
mans consciousness is concerned he
is practically dead when the current
makes its first lightning flash through
his brain. 1t does not appear that the
Electrical Review has made a good
case"
So far the Review seems to be car
rying on the unequal combat alone.
Few either of the lay journals or of its
professional brethren have thought the
subject worthy of note, apparently re-
garding it as a settled matter-Liter-
AIRY Digest,