Post by Anja Nieser on Sept 19, 2006 16:28:18 GMT -5
State set to electrocute prisoner -- Confessed murderer to be first to die
in Tenn.'s electric chair since 1960
If self-confessed murderer Daryl Keith Holton gets his way, on Tuesday he
will become the first prisoner to die in Tennessee's electric chair in 46
years and only the 2nd person in the United States to be executed by that
method in more than 2 years.
Holton, who confessed to murdering his 3 young sons and his ex-wife's
daughter within hours of shooting them with a semiautomatic assault rifle,
is scheduled to be executed because he chose to quit appealing his death
sentence. He also chose the electric chair over the state's preferred
method of lethal injection.
Dorinda Carter, spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Correction,
said that even though the state has not used the electric chair to carry
out an execution in decades, staff members at the Riverbend Maximum
Security Institution in Nashville are trained in using the chair and ready
to carry out the execution.
From 1916 until 1960, 125 people were executed by electrocution in
Tennessee. In 2000, lethal injection replaced electrocution as the primary
method of execution, according to the Department of Correction.
Under Tennessee law, death-row inmates can choose either the electric
chair or lethal injection if their crimes were committed before 1999, a
strategy that was aimed at avoiding legal challenges to the process when
the state adopted lethal injection.
Carter said the prison staff practices the process of lethal injection
each month with one staff member acting as the condemned inmate. The mock
inmate is taken out of the cell, strapped to a gurney, wheeled from the
"death watch" area into the execution chamber, and injected with a
harmless saline solution.
At electrocution practice, which happens about every three months, a
current is run through the wiring in the chair and meters are used to
check voltage. Staff also practice walking a mock inmate from the cell to
the execution chamber and strapping him or her into the chair, Carter
said.
"They're prepared to carry this out as professionally as possible," she
said. "We haven't had experience in this area for 46 years, but I know
they're ready and capable.
"It's an extremely stressful time. It (electrocution) could be more
stressful. We just don't know because we don't have the experience.
Anytime you take a human life, it's a serious time," Carter said.
Stephen Ferrell, Holton's federal public defender, is trying to get the
federal courts to stop the execution on the grounds that the inmate isn't
mentally competent, and the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is expected
to rule today on a request for a stay. Ferrell also is appealing a ruling
earlier this month from a federal judge in Knoxville that Holton's case
didn't merit a full evidentiary hearing on his competency.
Ferrell says attorney-client privilege forbids him from talking about why
Holton chose the electric chair, a method of execution that no American
court has ever ruled amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.
But as legal challenges have mounted against its use, other states have
adopted alternative methods of execution, primarily lethal injection.
Nine states allow some or all condemned inmates to choose between lethal
injection and another execution method, according to the Death Penalty
Information Center. Ten states have the electric chair, but only Nebraska
uses it exclusively.
Virginia inmate Brandon Hedrick, 27, chose to die in the electric chair in
July, the first execution by that means in more than two years.
The last time the electric chair was used in Tennessee was Nov. 7, 1960,
when inmate William Tines was executed for rape. Tennessee did not execute
another inmate until Robert Glen Coe by lethal injection in 2000.
Sedley Alley, convicted of raping and killing a jogger in 1985, was
executed in June also by lethal injection.
John Webster, a professor at the department of biomedical engineering at
the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has testified about the electric
chair, said many states have stopped using the chair because it's more
controversial and gruesome than lethal injection.
"It's disfiguring. The family will end up with the body and frequently
find burns on the scalp, leg and neck," Webster said. "For those who have
been witnesses to this form of execution, it's unpleasant to see someone
shocked and responding to a shock. The odor and the air smells of burning
pork.
"Lethal injection looks more pleasant than electrocution," he said. "There
have been some cases where it's been botched, where not enough current
goes through and they don't get killed. There have been people to survive
this."
Holton's crime stunned his hometown of Shelbyville, a city with about
18,000 residents some 50 miles south of Nashville.
On Nov. 30, 1997, Holton told the four children -- Steven, 12, Brent, 10,
Eric, 6, and their half-sister Kayla, 4 -- that they were going Christmas
shopping when he picked them up from their mother at a Wal-Mart parking
lot.
Nearly five hours later, Holton walked into the Shelbyville Police
Department and told officers he had lined up the children at his uncle's
auto repair garage and shot them. The bodies were found stacked atop each
other beneath a tarp.
Holton turned himself in after he went looking for his former wife and her
boyfriend but couldn't find them.
He was found guilty in 1999 of 4 counts of 1st-degree murder.
(source: Knoxville News-Sentinel)
in Tenn.'s electric chair since 1960
If self-confessed murderer Daryl Keith Holton gets his way, on Tuesday he
will become the first prisoner to die in Tennessee's electric chair in 46
years and only the 2nd person in the United States to be executed by that
method in more than 2 years.
Holton, who confessed to murdering his 3 young sons and his ex-wife's
daughter within hours of shooting them with a semiautomatic assault rifle,
is scheduled to be executed because he chose to quit appealing his death
sentence. He also chose the electric chair over the state's preferred
method of lethal injection.
Dorinda Carter, spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Correction,
said that even though the state has not used the electric chair to carry
out an execution in decades, staff members at the Riverbend Maximum
Security Institution in Nashville are trained in using the chair and ready
to carry out the execution.
From 1916 until 1960, 125 people were executed by electrocution in
Tennessee. In 2000, lethal injection replaced electrocution as the primary
method of execution, according to the Department of Correction.
Under Tennessee law, death-row inmates can choose either the electric
chair or lethal injection if their crimes were committed before 1999, a
strategy that was aimed at avoiding legal challenges to the process when
the state adopted lethal injection.
Carter said the prison staff practices the process of lethal injection
each month with one staff member acting as the condemned inmate. The mock
inmate is taken out of the cell, strapped to a gurney, wheeled from the
"death watch" area into the execution chamber, and injected with a
harmless saline solution.
At electrocution practice, which happens about every three months, a
current is run through the wiring in the chair and meters are used to
check voltage. Staff also practice walking a mock inmate from the cell to
the execution chamber and strapping him or her into the chair, Carter
said.
"They're prepared to carry this out as professionally as possible," she
said. "We haven't had experience in this area for 46 years, but I know
they're ready and capable.
"It's an extremely stressful time. It (electrocution) could be more
stressful. We just don't know because we don't have the experience.
Anytime you take a human life, it's a serious time," Carter said.
Stephen Ferrell, Holton's federal public defender, is trying to get the
federal courts to stop the execution on the grounds that the inmate isn't
mentally competent, and the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is expected
to rule today on a request for a stay. Ferrell also is appealing a ruling
earlier this month from a federal judge in Knoxville that Holton's case
didn't merit a full evidentiary hearing on his competency.
Ferrell says attorney-client privilege forbids him from talking about why
Holton chose the electric chair, a method of execution that no American
court has ever ruled amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.
But as legal challenges have mounted against its use, other states have
adopted alternative methods of execution, primarily lethal injection.
Nine states allow some or all condemned inmates to choose between lethal
injection and another execution method, according to the Death Penalty
Information Center. Ten states have the electric chair, but only Nebraska
uses it exclusively.
Virginia inmate Brandon Hedrick, 27, chose to die in the electric chair in
July, the first execution by that means in more than two years.
The last time the electric chair was used in Tennessee was Nov. 7, 1960,
when inmate William Tines was executed for rape. Tennessee did not execute
another inmate until Robert Glen Coe by lethal injection in 2000.
Sedley Alley, convicted of raping and killing a jogger in 1985, was
executed in June also by lethal injection.
John Webster, a professor at the department of biomedical engineering at
the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has testified about the electric
chair, said many states have stopped using the chair because it's more
controversial and gruesome than lethal injection.
"It's disfiguring. The family will end up with the body and frequently
find burns on the scalp, leg and neck," Webster said. "For those who have
been witnesses to this form of execution, it's unpleasant to see someone
shocked and responding to a shock. The odor and the air smells of burning
pork.
"Lethal injection looks more pleasant than electrocution," he said. "There
have been some cases where it's been botched, where not enough current
goes through and they don't get killed. There have been people to survive
this."
Holton's crime stunned his hometown of Shelbyville, a city with about
18,000 residents some 50 miles south of Nashville.
On Nov. 30, 1997, Holton told the four children -- Steven, 12, Brent, 10,
Eric, 6, and their half-sister Kayla, 4 -- that they were going Christmas
shopping when he picked them up from their mother at a Wal-Mart parking
lot.
Nearly five hours later, Holton walked into the Shelbyville Police
Department and told officers he had lined up the children at his uncle's
auto repair garage and shot them. The bodies were found stacked atop each
other beneath a tarp.
Holton turned himself in after he went looking for his former wife and her
boyfriend but couldn't find them.
He was found guilty in 1999 of 4 counts of 1st-degree murder.
(source: Knoxville News-Sentinel)