The Electric Chair in New York
NEW YORK PBA TROOPER A Piece of History: The Electric Chair in New York neck would not break as expected. In In any event, it was not uncom• Raymond M. Gibbons, Jr., DDS, FAGD such instances, the victim strangled mon- for the subject's heart to con• Forensic Sciences Unit, NYSP slowly, twisting convulsively for as tinue beating for as long as eight long as 15 minutes before death fi• minutes after the trap had been ROM JUNE 4, 1888, until June nally occurred. As one text reported: sprung. That fact troubled many peo• 1, 1965, the lawful method for ". there were repeated examples of ple who feared that the subject might Fputting capital offenders to the fall failing to snap the recipient's be experiencing unintended suffer• death in New York was the ing. All of this led to a electric chair. In the irrev• search for a swift, painless erent jargon of the prisons and humane alternative to and the press the device the scaffold. was nicknamed Old Dr. Alfred Porter South- Sparky, Yellow Mama and wick, a Buffalo, NY, den• Gruesome Gertie among tist and former engineer on others. At the time this Great Lakes freighters, is method of execution was credited with originating adopted, however, it was the ideal of legal punish• hailed as a humane and ment of death by electric• civilized alternative to ity. "Old Electricity," as he methods it supplanted. was known, was convinced Until that time, hanging that this was a much more had been the most com• humane way of bringing^ mon method of executing swift and painless death to condemned murderers.
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