Boston Herald/AP: NASHVILLE, Tenn. — If Tennessee electrocutes Edmund Zagorski on Thursday, it will be in an electric chair built by a self-taught execution expert who is no longer welcome in the prison system and who worries that his device will malfunction.
Fred Leuchter (LOOT’-cher) had a successful career in the execution business before his reputation was tainted by his claim that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz.
Tennessee’s chair, which hasn’t been used since 2007, is just one of many execution devices that Leuchter worked on between 1979 and 1990, according to an article by Fordham University professor Deborah Denno in the William and Mary Law Review. In addition to electric chairs, Leuchter built, refurbished and consulted on gas chambers, lethal injection machines and a gallows for at least 27 states.
After his comments about the Holocaust, it came to light that he had neither an engineering degree nor a license, even though he promoted himself as an engineer. His rise and fall was portrayed in a 2000 documentary.
Nonetheless, Leuchter stands behind the electric chair he rebuilt in 1988, relying on skills picked up designing navigational and surveillance equipment and a careful study of documents describing early executions. His concern is that Tennessee’s chair will fail because of changes others made to it after he was no longer allowed to service it.
“What I’m worried about now is Tennessee’s got an electric chair that’s going to hurt someone or cause problems. And it’s got my name on it,” Leuchter said. “I don’t think it’s going to be humane.”
Gov. Bill Haslam said he is confident the execution can be carried out without problems.
“I have a great deal of confidence in our Department of Correction folks. … We’ve spoken with them regularly and they’ve assured us” the chair is ready. read more
Read up on the procedure and get it right. “Blood and Volts” by TH. Metzger. Smoke from the ears is a good sign its working correctly.
Leave it to the gov’t to makr something so simple…complicated.
Just give the convict a huge injection of heroin/fentanyl. He’d be dead before the plunger hit the end.
So simple…and fool proof. Cheaper, too.
Keep Zapping ’til he stops crapping.
it only takes a few milliamps across the heart to stop it. It’s the amps that kill, not the volts. The signs should read, “WARNING, High Amperage”
All it takes apparently is a lock stuffed into a sock. What is that, 4 bucks? 6 bucks?
I’d chip in for some of those.
A super homosexual black not tranny Eddie S. Glaude Jr. is the chair of the Center for African-American Studies and the William S. Tod Professor of Religion and African-American Studies at Princeton University is on msNPC admitting that all he wants now is the kids. It said it, Just reporting.
Take an extension cord. Strip the wires. Have the condemned hold the black wire in one hand, the white wire in the other. Plug the cord into any standard (not arc-fault or ground fault protected) AC outlet. Voila! Problem solved!
Fentanyl seems like the obvious choice to me. Quick, cheap, and the manufacturers (the chicoms) aren’t going to get on their high horse and say that is not the intended use of their product.
It never ceases to amaze me that vets put animals of all sizes down on a daily basis without pain, yet somehow it seems nearly impossible to do the same with humans. Why is that?
Still don’t get all the drama. Medical oxygen mask, pure nitrogen. Ten minutes and you’re done. They just go to sleep from anoxia and eventually just quit breathing.
Two space shuttle techs died that way and they didn’t even use the mask. Just crawled into a compartment that had been nitrogen purged and were found laying on the floor. They never knew anything was wrong.
If at first you don’t succeed, try again.
Department of corrections yeah, he’s been corrected all right.
He’s worried “someone may get hurt”….? Why do they deserve a humane death? Did their victims get a humane death? 26000 ways to die. Use the slowest.
I’ve always wondered why a guard tower can’t also be used as a gallows…
“What I’m worried about now is Tennessee’s got an electric chair that’s going to hurt someone…”
Well, wouldn’t THAT be a tragedy?
🙂
Not much thought is given to how victims died, criminals should die by the same method his victims did. Cruelty should not even be an issue.
Left Coast Dan @ 5:04 – Because we LIKE our animals.
Why don’t they just give these people that Fentanyl stuff? They say you’ll drop dead from a dose the size of two grains of salt.
Why did they fire Leuchter? None of his clients complained.
When movies, and actors, were great and electric chairs worked:
Angels With Dirty Faces
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTE6VT_2SKI
Slightly OT…. I remember watching the crowd outside the prison where Ted Bundy was going to be electrocuted, and one of the people carried a sign that read : “Buckle Up Bundy, It’s the Law”. I thought that was hilarious.
There’s not a rifle somewhere in that prison?
They lowered the wattage but increased the current.
I suppose the objective is not have it so much that it blows the rat bastard’s foot off.
Lucky Seven Amps coming out of Ol’ Sparky “will kill.*”
*Doug Marcaida
Punishment should fit the crime.
Maybe Fred L has nightmares about Thomas Edison & a repeat of the first electrocution in the Edison Chair that was a quite gruesome affair. ( rather similar to the electrocution scene of Michael Jeter in the movie The Green Mile)
https://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/first-execution-electric-chair .