Tag: lethal injection
-
Nitrogen Hypoxia – The Death Penalty’s Future?
It’s never been done before and might never be used, but Alabama has announced its near-completion of a nitrogen gas chamber if it should prove impossible to obtain drugs for lethal injections. Far from dusting off its electric chair, (the notorious ‘Yellow Mama’) like Tennessee and South Carolina or offering firing squads as South Carolina…
-
Virginia to abolish capital punishment.
On February 3 the Virginia State Senate voted 21 to 17 in favour of abolishing Virginia’s death penalty. Two days later the House of Delegates voted 57-41 to back repealing capital punishment in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Governor Ralph Northam has also indicated he will back the decision, remarking that “The practice is fundamentally inequitable.…
-
Are Federal executions nearing their end..?
Between 1953 and 2003 the US Federal Government carried out fourteen executions. Since June 2020 it has carried out nine, most recently that of Brandon Bernard at Terre Haute Federal penitentiary in Indiana. Tonight (within hours at the time of writing) it intends to perform another (Alfred Bourgeois) and has another four scheduled before the…
-
On This Day in 1964 – Joseph Johnson, Jr., the night they drove Old Sparky down.
“The crunch. The mounting whine and snarl of the generator. The man’s lips peel back, the throat strains for a last desperate cry, the body arches against the restraining straps as the generator whines and snarls again, the features purple, steam and smoke rise from the bald spots on head and leg while he sick-sweet…
-
US Federal Executions, a worrying new trend?
The recent Federal executions of three prisoners are both a rarity and perhaps the start of a worrying trend. While individual states have long been executing convicts within their own jurisdictions the Federal Government has historically been far more restrained. Historically speaking Uncle Sam usually hands out long sentences but seldom executes. The most recent,…
-
RIP Jerry Givens, former Virginia executioner-turned-abolitionist.
Jerry Givens was an unlikely campaigner against the death penalty. A correctional officer at the Virginia State Penitentiary since the early 1970’s, Givens was also its resident executioner. Until going to prison himself in 1999 on perjury and money-laundering charges (charges he always denied) Givens rose through the ranks. At first supporting the death…
-
On This Day in 1924 – Howard Hinton, Georgia’s first electrocution.
It’s common to find ‘Peachtree Bandit’ Frank Dupre, armed robber and murderer executed on September 1, 1921 with Luke McDonald, listed as the last man to hang in Georgia. He wasn’t. That was Arthur Meyers, a murderer hanged at Augusta on June 17, 1931 for a murder committed in March, 1924. McDonald, despite dying with…
-
On This Day in 1962: Illinois bids farewell to Old Sparky (and James Dukes).
When 25 witnesses, mostly reporters, gathered in the basement death chamber at Illinois’s Cook County Jail, they couldn’t have known they were gathering there for the last time. Decades down the line Illinois hacks would gather again for the same reason, but in a different place and to see someone killed by a different method.…
-
On This Day in 1963: New York State’s Last Execution, Eddie Lee Mays.
August 15, 1963 was an historic day in New York’s penal history, although nobody involved knew it at the time. New York’s lawmakers didn’t know it. the Warden of New York’s infamous Sing Sing Prison (now the Ossining Correctional Facility) didn’t know either. Dow Hover (New York’s last ‘State Electrician’) was also unaware, it was…
-
Sparky’s Revenge; South Carolina considers reinstating the electric chair.
So, the State of South Carolina (previously responsible for executing then exonerating 14-year old George Stinney) is considering dusting off Old Sparky. Difficulties in obtaining lethal injection drugs have caused a backlog on Death Row. South Carolina has numerous condemned inmates, wants to start executing them, but can’t obtain the legally-approved means to do it.…
Crimescribe 