Electrocution
Electrocution Is Banned in Last State to Rely on It
By ADAM LIPTAK
The electric chair is cruel and unusual punishment, the Nebraska
Supreme Court ruled Friday. The decision effectively suspended
executions there, as Nebraska is the only state that still relies
solely on electrocution, which was once the dominant form of
execution in the United States.
“The evidence here shows that electrocution inflicts intense pain and
agonizing suffering,” Justice William M. Connolly wrote for the
majority in a 6-to-1 decision.
The state’s attorney general, Jon Bruning, said he would “move to the
legislative process to get a new method of execution.”
Working on a clean slate, Nebraska may opt for a form of lethal
injection that does not rely on the combination of three chemicals
that is the subject of a pending challenge in the United States
Supreme Court. It may also explore entirely different methods of
execution.
Seven states allow at least some inmates to choose electrocution
instead of lethal injection. Two others, Illinois and Oklahoma, have
designated electrocution as the fallback method should lethal
injection be ruled unconstitutional.
While Friday’s ruling is not binding outside Nebraska, some legal
experts said courts might now be reluctant to allow condemned inmates
to choose electrocution in states where that is an option.
“It’s essentially being relegated to a museum,” said Richard C.
Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information
Center, a nonprofit organization based in Washington.
Indeed, Mr. Dieter added, the decision may cause Nebraska and perhaps
other states to reconsider current methods of execution. Nebraska has
executed only three prisoners since 1976, the last one in 1997.
In the case pending before the United States Supreme Court, Baze v.
Rees, lawyers for the inmates have said that using the single drug
common in veterinary euthanasia would avoid what they called the
possibility of excruciating pain inherent in the three-chemical
combination.
The United States Supreme Court has never held a method of execution
to be unconstitutional, and in 1890 it appeared to say that
electrocutions did not violate the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits
cruel and unusual punishment. In the Baze case, the court is
considering the standard to be used in assessing the
constitutionality of the three chemicals used in lethal injections.
The challenge in Nebraska was brought by Raymond Mata Jr., who was
convicted in 2000 of kidnapping and murdering Adam Gomez, the 3-year-
old son of a former girlfriend. Mr. Mata dismembered the boy’s body,
and human bone fragments were found in the stomach of Mr. Mata’s dog.
“We recognize the temptation to make the prisoner suffer, just as the
prisoner made an innocent victim suffer,” Justice Connolly wrote.
“But it is the hallmark of a civilized society that we punish cruelty
without practicing it. Condemned prisoners must not be tortured to
death, regardless of their crimes.”
The decision did not affect Mr. Mata’s death sentence. “Although it
cannot be implemented under current law,” Justice Connolly wrote of
the sentence, it “remains valid.”
The court held that electrocutions were unconstitutional under
Nebraska’s Constitution. The provision it relied on uses the same
language concerning cruel and unusual punishment as the Eighth
Amendment of the United States Constitution.
In the 1890 decision, the United States Supreme Court said that
“punishments are cruel when they involve torture or a lingering
death,” suggesting that electrocutions do not cross that line.
In 1993, three justices questioned the continuing validity of that
ruling, in a statement issued when the Supreme Court declined to hear
an Eighth Amendment challenge to electrocutions. Justice David H.
Souter, joined by Justices Harry A. Blackmun and John Paul Stevens,
wrote that the court had “not spoken squarely” on the question since
1890 and that “modern knowledge” might require a different result.
Electrocution became the most common form of execution by the middle
of the last century, displacing hangings. But no state has adopted
electrocution since 1949. Lethal gas was briefly popular, and lethal
injection, now the almost universal method of execution, was
introduced in 1977.
By 1999, 34 of the 38 states with capital punishment had moved to
lethal injection as the sole method or as an option, largely because
it was considered more humane than the other methods. From 2000 to
2002, Alabama, Florida and Georgia eliminated electrocution as the
exclusive method, leaving only Nebraska.
The majority in Friday’s decision said electrocution gave rise to an
undue risk of “unnecessary pain, suffering and torture.” In addition,
Justice Connolly wrote, it is “unnecessarily cruel in its purposeless
infliction of physical violence and mutilation of the prisoner’s body.”
“Burning of the prisoner’s body is an inherent part of
electrocution,” he wrote, adding that is it not unusual for witnesses
to see smoke coming from the prisoner’s head or legs.
Chief Justice Michael G. Heavican, dissenting, wrote that the
majority should have followed the 1890 decision, given that the state
and federal constitutional provisions are identical.
Attorney General Bruning said he would ask the court to reconsider
its decision. “Nebraskans overwhelmingly support the death penalty,”
he said, “and justice demands our state has a constitutional method
of execution.”
Last year, Nebraska’s unicameral legislature came within one vote of
doing away with the death penalty entirely.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
