Some attorneys have been debating whether it is simply a matter of training the executioners better in the administration of the injections. They said that in one case in Florida it took a half hour for the inmate to die with a lot of pain.

Interesting that you should bring up the electric chair. I have heard some gruesome stories about people burning in the chair and others in which the switch had to be thrown three or four times to administer death. I had an interesting closing two years ago. It was a refi for a corrections officer in the prison in which the last inmate put to death in Connecticut  was incarcerated. I asked him why the executions were scheduled so late at night. He said it was a custom from the early days of electrocution. He indicated that at one time the draw on electricity when the switch was thrown often caused a brown out or black out in the local community. So they scheduled the executions for a time when there was less of a draw on the grid.

With respect to the guillotine...I have seen movies of it in action. Apparently it was still in use in Europe up until the l930's or 1940's. Now the European Union has abolished the death penalty, and will not extradite prisoners to countries that invoke it.to post a reply: login - or - register