The Nebraska Supreme Court has agreed to con­sid­er whether the state’s use of the elec­tric chair is cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment. The case, brought by death row inmate Carey Dean Moore, will be heard on May 5. Every oth­er death penal­ty state has adopt­ed lethal injec­tion as an alter­na­tive method of exe­cu­tion. A bill to offer lethal injec­tion in Nebraska remains stalled in the state’s Senate Judiciary Committee.

Three peo­ple have been put to death in Nebraska since exe­cu­tions resumed in 1994. Coroner reports doc­u­ment that one of the men, John Joubert, suf­fered a 4‑inch brain blis­ter on the top of his head and blis­ter­ing on both sides of his head above his ears. The reports note that anoth­er man, Robert Williams, had a ​“bub­ble blis­ter” the size of a base­ball on his left calf and had pro­nounced ​“char­ring” on both sides of a knee and the top of his head. A wit­ness to Williams’ exe­cu­tion report­ed see­ing smoke com­ing from his head.

Moore’s attor­ney, Alan Peterson, notes, ​“Now, no oth­er state man­dates that humans face the hor­ror of death by inter­nal burn­ing and shock, with the well-known his­to­ry of bun­gled, smok­ing fail­ures of the cen­tu­ry-old tech­nique. [Electrocution] involves more than mere extin­guish­ment of life and will sub­ject defen­dant to need­less agony, phys­i­cal suf­fer­ing, tor­ture, muti­la­tion, dis­fig­ure­ment, and degra­da­tion.… No longer can this state tol­er­ate the form of pun­ish­ment now almost uni­ver­sal­ly rec­og­nized to be beyond the bounds of min­i­mum human dig­ni­ty, civil­i­ty, and decen­cy.” (Associated Press, April 19, 2005).


Georgia’s Supreme Court ruled that the elec­tric chair vio­lat­ed the state’s con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­hi­bi­tion of cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment in 2001. A few states allow inmates to choose the elec­tric chair rather than lethal injec­tion as their method of exe­cu­tion. See Methods of Execution.

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