You see stories of people getting accidentally electrocuted in everyday life and dropping dead instantly, why aren’t electric chairs engineered with that amount of power?
In: 68
Death by electricity is … iffy. We have general guidelines, but we cannot say for sure that electricity X will kill all people because there are variables in people and conditions, and there’s even luck involved based on your heart rhythm when electricity is applied. They picked a number and rolled with it, one high enough that it should kill most of the time, but low enough to not cause an immediate fireball.
Overall, the chair was meant to save capital punishment. There had been some gruesome hangings in the US, and people were losing their taste for executions. This was supposed to be a less horrific method so people wouldn’t start opposing execution. Then this got a bad rap so we moved to gas chambers, then that got a bad rap so we moved to IV drugs.
Latest Answers