TEXAS SEEKS REVAMP OF COUNTRY'S ELECTRIC CHAIRS

April 26 2009

Dallas, TX – Times have never been worse for the electric chair. With continued protests against the death penalty and the continued dominance of other methods of execution such as lethal injection the lowly electric chair has fallen far out of favour throughout the country. Now prison officials in Texas are spearheading a campaign to resurrect use of the electric chair to its former glory and once again make it the people’s choice for executions.

Texas has long been at the forefront of capital punishment in the United States with
over a third of the executions since reinstatement in 1976 being conducted in the lone star state. More and more of those deaths though have come through lethal injection with only handful actually taking a seat in the electric chair. Other methods such as firing squad, the gas chamber, and hanging have also fallen into disuse across the country though none of those retain the romance of the chair. With this renewed effort, Texas officials are hoping to not only bring the chair back into public prominence in that state, but also resurrect it for the entire country.

“We pass by the electric chair room nearly every day on our way to the lethal injection chamber and it brings twinge of sadness to many of us. To see that chair fall into disrepair in favour of lethal injection make us all a little upset. Every now and then we go in, dust off the cobwebs, give a little polish with Pledge, but it’s just not the same thing,” said Richard Walker, head of the team seeking the restoration of the chair. “There really is no better symbol of execution than the electric chair and we think it’s time it was brought back. No more of this fancy clean ways of executing, it’s time we cleaned up our electric chairs and brought them back for the 21st century.”

Prisons have been one of the few bright spots in the economy. With more and more people turning to crime to make ends meet prisons
throughout the United States have been seeing significant increases in crime and imprisonments, though very few as yet have been crimes the generally receive death penalty sentences.

“If the economy does bottom out we can expect to see a lot more violent crime but even if that doesn’t come to be, bringing back the flashier forms of execution could spark, so to speak, a whole new interest in that form of punishment. Part of the concern with lethal injection is that it just doesn’t have the visceral impact of the chair and therefore doesn’t do much to prevent crime,” said Scrape TV Crime analyst Willard Weston. “Of course crime prevention has never really been the goal of execution and would really be self defeating. The advantage that the chair has over other forms is that it is so iconic that even criminals want to be a part of it. By bringing it back prison officials would be going a long way to solidifying their economic growth.”

Among other changes, Texas is planning on repainting the execution chambers and renaming the chairs across the state in hopes of capturing the public’s imagination much like ‘Old Sparky’ and ‘Gruesome Gertie’ did in the past.

“The world has changed a lot since those days but there isn’t a person in America today who can’t get behind a cool name. Those old titles might not really fly with today’s youth but coming up with something would be a good move,” continued Weston. “They should also look at giving the chairs a web presence, maybe Facebook or MySpace or even a blog. That would help connect to younger people and really lock it into the public consciousness.”

Thus far in 2009 Texas has executed 13 people, a little more than half of the total. All by lethal injection.

Mike Michaels, American Correspondent

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