Edison and the Electric Chair_ A Story of Light and Death - Mark Essig [161]
13. Bungled electrocutions may have increased in frequency as the century progressed. Professionals of the stature of Alfred Kennelly or Alfred A. Spitzka became less willing to offer their services, and inept prison handymen sometimes found themselves in charge of electric chair maintenance, with disastrous results. In the 1980s America's foremost engineer in matters of execution was a man named Fred Leuchter, who designed and sold equipment to several state prisons. After Leuchter became involved with Holocaust denial groups, reporters discovered that his only college degree was a B.A. in history. After being charged with practicing engineering without a license, he filed a consent decree with a Massachusetts court in which he agreed to stop representing himself as an engineer. Denno, "Is Electrocution an Unconstitutional Method of Execution?" 37-43; Errol Morris, Mr. Death (Lion's Gate Films, 1999); Harold Hillman, "The Possible Pain Experienced During Execution by Different Methods," Perception 22 (1993): 745-53; Harold Hillman, "An Unnatural Way to Die," New Scientist (October 27, 1983): 276-78; A. Sances et al., "Electrical Injuries," Surgery, Gynecology, and Obstetrics 149 (July 1979): 97; Mark Costanzo, Just Revenge: Costs and Consequences of the Death Penalty (New York: St. Martin's, 1997), 43-45; Jacob Weisburg, "This Is Your Death," New Republic 205 (July 1, 1991): 23-27; Austin Sarat, "Killing Me Softly: Capital Punishment and the Technologies for Taking Life," in Pain, Death, and the Law (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), 43-70; Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell, Who Owns Death? Capital Punishment, the American Conscience, and the End of Executions (New York: William Morrow, 2000), 36; Susan Lehman, "A Matter of Engineering: Capital Punishment as a Technical Problem," Atlantic Monthly 263 (February 1990): 26-29.
14. Banner, Death Penalty, 220-23; John F. Galliher, Gregory Ray, and Brent Cook, "Abolition and Reinstatement of Capital Punishment During the Progressive Era and Early Twentieth Century," Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 83 (1992): 538-78; Norman S. Hayner and John R. Cranor, "The Death Penalty in Washington State," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 284 (1952): 101-4; Ellen Elizabeth Guillot, "Abolition and Restoration of the Death Penalty in Missouri," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 284 (1952): 105-14.
15. Banner, Death Penalty, 223-27, 240; Bowers, Legal Homicide, 21-24, 67-102; Hugo Adam Bedau, ed., The Death Penalty in America: Current Controversies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 11-17.
16. Quotation from Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972). Also see Banner, Death Penalty, 228-30, 247-66; Bedau, Death Penalty in America, 183-85.
17. Banner, Death Penalty, 257-78, 284-90; Bedau, Death Penalty in America, 16-7, 185-87
18. Banner, Death Penalty, 267, 275-78, 284-90; Bedau, Death Penalty in America, 17-8; Phoebe C. Ellsworth and Samuel R. Gross, "Hardening of the Attitudes: Americans' Views of the Death Penalty," in Bedau, Death Penalty in America, 90-115.
19. Banner, Death Penalty, 300; Amnesty International Web site, http://www.web.amnesty.org/rmp/dplibrary.nsf/ff6dd728f6268d0480256aab003d14a8/46e4de9db90876358025688100506350 Open Document, July 10, 2002.
20. Quotation from Evans, Rituals of Retribution, 427. Also see Report of the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment, 1949-1933 (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1953), 256; Evans, Rituals of Retribution, 427. Political differences also played a role. In Britain and France, the decision to abolish the death penalty was extremely unpopular at first. But the national governments refused to reinstate it, and eventually the people came to support the ban. After the Furman decision, politicians in