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Execution by electrocution, performed using an electric chair, is a method of execution originating in the United States in which the condemned person is strapped to a specially built wooden chair and electrocuted through electrodes fastened on the head and leg. This execution method, conceived in 1881 by a Buffalo, New York dentist named Alfred P. Southwick, was developed throughout the 1880s as a supposed humane alternative to hanging, and first used in 1890. This execution method has been used in the United States and, for several decades, in the Philippines. While death was originally theorized to result from damage to the brain, it was shown in 1899 that it primarily results from ventricular fibrillation and eventual cardiac arrest.
Hanging is the suspension of a person by a noose or ligature around the neck. The Oxford English Dictionary states that hanging in this sense is "specifically to put to death by suspension by the neck", though it formerly also referred to crucifixion and death by impalement in which the body would remain "hanging". Hanging has been a common method of capital punishment since medieval times, and is the primary execution method in numerous countries and regions. The first known account of execution by hanging was in Homer's Odyssey. In this specialised meaning of the common word hang, the past and past participle is hanged instead of hung.
The list of people executed by the U.S. state of Texas, with the exception of 1819-1849, is divided into periods of 10 years.
Old Sparky is the nickname of the electric chairs in Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. Old Smokey was the nickname of the electric chairs used in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. "Old Sparky" is sometimes used to refer to electric chairs in general, and not one of a specific state.
Karla Faye Tucker was an American woman sentenced to death for killing two people with a pickaxe during a burglary. She was the first woman to be executed in the United States since Velma Barfield in 1984 in North Carolina, and the first in Texas since Chipita Rodriguez in 1863. She was convicted of murder in Texas in 1984 and executed by lethal injection after 14 years on death row. Due to her gender and widely publicized conversion to Christianity, she inspired an unusually large national and international movement that advocated the commutation of her sentence to life without parole, a movement that included a few foreign government officials.
Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville or Huntsville Unit (HV), nicknamed "Walls Unit", is a Texas state prison located in Huntsville, Texas, United States. The approximately 54.36-acre (22.00 ha) facility, near downtown Huntsville, is operated by the Correctional Institutions Division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. The facility, the oldest Texas state prison, opened in 1849.
Capital punishment in Iraq is a legal penalty. It was commonly used by the government of Saddam Hussein, was temporarily halted after the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq that deposed Saddam, and has since been reinstated. Executions are carried out by hanging.
William Calcraft was a 19th-century English hangman, one of the most prolific of British executioners. It is estimated in his 45-year career he carried out 450 executions. A cobbler by trade, Calcraft was initially recruited to flog juvenile offenders held in Newgate Prison. While selling meat pies on streets around the prison, Calcraft met the City of London's hangman, John Foxton.
The Lexington murders was one of the most notable crimes in California during the 19th century. Lloyd Leadbetter Majors, Joseph Jewell and John Franklin Showers, were responsible for the brutal murder and robbery of William Peter Renowden and Archibald McIntyre in Lexington, California, on March 11, 1883.
George Ronald York and James Douglas Latham were an American spree killer team who were the last people to be legally executed by the U.S. state of Kansas.
While laws regarding the imposition of capital punishment in the state of New York are still on the books, it is no longer enforced as it has been declared unconstitutional in the state and this ruling has not been overturned. The last execution took place in 1963, when Eddie Lee Mays was electrocuted at Sing Sing Prison. The state was the first to adopt the electric chair as a method of execution, which replaced hanging.
The Great Hanging at Gainesville was the execution by hanging of 41 suspected Unionists in Gainesville, Texas, in October 1862 during the American Civil War. Two additional suspects were shot by Confederate troops while trying to escape. Some 150–200 men were captured and arrested by state Confederate troops in and near Cooke County at a time when numerous citizens of North Texas were opposed to the new law on conscription. Many suspects were tried by a "Citizens' Court" organized by a Confederate officer. It made up its own rules for conviction and had no status under state law. Although only 11% of county households owned slaves, seven of the 12 men on the jury were slaveholders.
References
- 1 2 The Espy File: 1608–2002. Death Penalty Information Center. Retrieved 23 February 2009.
- ↑ A Public Hanging in Texas. The New York Times , published March 20, 1880.
- ↑ A Hanging in Texas. The New York Times, published November 14, 1880.
- ↑ Hanging Of a Negro in Texas. The New York Times, published August 22, 1882.