Electric Chair

If Amperage is what is lethal, why is so much voltage pumped into the body of the victim?

To make sure the guest of honor accepts all that amperage- Overkill is the goal, since a half dead victim just won't do.. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

Makes a nasty mess when the recipient doesn't respond in the predicted manner......sometimes it has taken several extra jolts and lots of extra fried human smoke.

Two reasons. First of all to overcome the resistance of the human body high voltage is needed to get enough amps through to ensure lethality. Second, they want death to be instantaneous so this requires some overkill with regards to voltage (no pun intended). Usually one contact is on the head so that the brain is fried as soon as the current starts flowing. No brain means no sensation of pain regardless of how disturbing the rest of the process is. IMO electrocution remains the best method of execution with the guillotine a close second. I hate the trend towards lethal injection. Lethal injection seems more like they're putting down a sick animal than executing a dangerous criminal.

I thought that if they didn't get you toasted the first time, you could be free to go. Or is some archaic law??

Funny thing with leathal injection, is that they have to steriize the needle............ Don't ask me why.....

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DaFiend said:
I thought that if they didn't get you toasted the first time, you could be free to go. Or is some archaic law??

Funny thing with leathal injection, is that they have to steriize the needle............ Don't ask me why.....

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There are recorded instances where the attending officers had to stab the accused to death when the chair malfunctioned.

OUCH!

Honey..... how was your day at work?

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

it's the volts that jolts but it's the mills that kills

Ever zapped yourself with a typical alkaline battery - just by touching the contacts? No? Then the voltage wasn't high enough, even though most batteries can supply enough current to kill you... just not the voltage to push it through your barely-conductive flesh.

Ever heard about all the people killed by static electricty every year from door knobs, etc? No? There's hardly any current from garden-variety static electricity, although the voltage is disgustingly high (tens of thousands of volts).

Jo S,

If you do a web search on the subject you will find a few interesting things.

This subject is a lot like 'wound balistics' amazing and repulsive at the same time.

One is an article about Florida's chair and why it mis fired a few times. That ended up causing florida to switch to LE. When you read the article you will see they use a gadgit called 'saturable core reactor' it's a kind of transformer used for controled heat processes. Like drying paint in a factory. It will deliver a constant wattage even if the 'load' changes charastic. Like the other guy said, conduction into humans is not an easy thing to do.

The Florida numbers vairy between 1800 to 2200vac current limited to 8 amps.

We have a 'skin resistance' and an internal resistance. Our internal resistance is about 50 ohms, and our skin resistance can variy wildly.

The high volts punch a hole in the skin resistance and the rest do the job. The amps are limited to keep 'scorching and burning to a minimum'. The contact patchs are a problem. If you read that florida article you will learn more about something that is repelent.

Just so you know. I was thinking of a tastless bumper sticker protesting New Yorks LE bill. It would read "A good convict conducts the maximum penalty in ampers". I don't have a lot of use for idiot criminals.

If you watch carefully you will see my poor attitude exit stage left.

Be well
Jack Crow in the first world.

Fergit the lethal injection or the electric chair. We should have something more medieval. Like skinning the person alive then sticking them on a pike to let their own weight impale themselves slowly.

That'll teach them durn kids to shoplift!

It needs to be public and violent, otherwise what's the point? Stoning is pretty good, but getting ripped in half by horses would also be good. There should be an internet vote as to the method for each prisoner.

As someone who has lost someone very close to murder, I find it amusing to see people joke about something they really dont understand.

At my darkest moment I thought the best penalty would be to put the criminal in jail for life, but pick the best, most successful person in the criminals immediate family and put THEM to death by the same method the killer used..

That to me seemed fair. Killing a useless criminal is no punishment at all.

Nowadays I trust that God's vengeance against the wicked will make human ideas of suffering laughable.

Vengeance is His.

Good enough for me.

Lost my uncle to a couple of guys with nothing better to do.

I hear they got out of prison a while back.

You know, there's like 1 state that still executes by firing squad! And I think hanging is still on the books here in MS.

Why not just kill their whole family???

And no, it's not joking, it's sarcasm. Also my God is not vengeful. On the other hand, I can understand your fustration, but avenging death with death, makes no sense to me unless YOU ARE God.

Eh, it's a very difficult topic, not something dealt with in detail on a forum dedicated to flashlights.

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DarkLight said:
At my darkest moment I thought the best penalty would be to put the criminal in jail for life, but pick the best, most successful person in the criminals immediate family and put THEM to death by the same method the killer used..

That to me seemed fair. Killing a useless criminal is no punishment at all.



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Dark, I've worked with a few of these guys. Many of them are so ego-centric, (I'm talking 4 year old level here, regardless of intellect) that they would consider a member of their family taking their penalty to be preferable. Not all to be sure, but more than decent people outside of the system can imagine. The kind of people than can bring themselves to victimize others suffer, as you can imagine, a significant deficiency in empathy. It hard for the average person to concieve of such a mentality because the average person is a decent empathetic human being and, to their credit, are prone to projecting those characteristics on others.

Dark, sorry to hear about your loss, but here are a few folks who share your thinking: Some guy in Pakistan did something "bad" so the judges decreed that his sister should be raped.

I'd like to think that we're more civilized than that.

Cheese - as you, my comment was sarcastic. If we are such a barbaric society as to think that the death penalty should have a revenge component (e.g. Who cares if we have to shock them a few times or finish them off with a bayonet - they DESERVE it) then we might as well go all the way.

Any society which has a standing death penalty values life less than a society which does not. Period. A standing death penalty says justifies killing under certain circumstances. I used to be a big supporter of the death penalty, my epiphany was when an abortion doctor was assassinated by a pro-life activist in Florida some years back. There was some discussion as to the justification to giving him the death penalty. He was no more justified for killing the abortion doctor for "killing" than the state would be for killing him for killing. You're trapped in the logic until you say that all killing is bad, no matter what the perceived benefit.

What ever happened to a merciful and forgiving God? Perhaps he got outsourced?

I said at one time I felt that way. Not anymore.
These days I feel the death penalty is too slow and cumbersome to be effective.

I believe there should be a one year limit to appeal.

Many people though are worried an innocent man might be put to death.

God is merciful and forgiving, but above all He is JUST.

Those who think the wicked will never answer for their unforgiven deeds are sorely mistaken.

Let's consider that about 2000 years ago an innocent man was subjected to the death penalty. Pretty well known case. And we haven't learned much since then, have we.

There are several death row cases being overturned by DNA evidence that wasn't available even a few years ago. People that jurors absolutely knew were guilty really weren't. Hey, plain and simple, we're a species that ain't perfect. This country is not like any other, and our system of justice is what makes us different. Barbaric justice is just an oxymoron.

Death is pretty permanent, and so life without parole in a little, tiny cage seems like a pretty good option -- punishing and if new evidence turns up, once closed, the doors can be re-opened. Punishment isn't hard to dish out. Keeping from lowering ourselves to the same level as mindless, viscious scum is pretty hard though.

The problem I see though is a man in prison with nothing to lose is still free to kill in prison.
Is it right for the person who say committed a drug charge to be killed by the convicted murderer who has nothing to lose?

What about the guards who may die guarding the man for the next 60 years?

By sparing this man his death penalty you may have sentenced others to death unwittingly.

the blood of the man killed by the life in prison murderer is on the hands of the anti-death penalty person.

Jack Crow,

What ever happened to Sparky? Last I heard, a convict was set on fire and a guard had to put him out.

Some folks are so Bass-Ackwards that they think Abortion is A-Ok and the death penalty is all wrong.

The death penalty as it stands isn't much use, except THAT particular person ain't gonna do it anymore.

But a baby is totally innocent. A grown person had the capacity at some point NOT to do wrong, and did it anyway.

Perhaps the one year of appeal and a public hanging would help stop the tide.

Criminals do NOT have the same rights I do. Period!