The week of the 25th anniver­sary of Florida​’s grue­some botched elec­tric chair exe­cu­tion of Jesse Tafero (pic­tured), the Tennessee Supreme Court began hear­ing a chal­lenge to the admin­is­tra­tion of a state law that would res­ur­rect the use of that State’s elec­tric chair if lethal injec­tion drugs are unavail­able. On May 6, 2015, the Tennessee jus­tices heard argu­ment on death-row inmates’ right to know which method of exe­cu­tion will be used in their cas­es. The Justices voiced con­cerns about the secre­cy that the law allows to shield the exe­cu­tion process and the deci­sion about which method to use. ​“How are the defen­dants sup­posed to know?” Justice Cornelia A. Clark asked, offer­ing a hypo­thet­i­cal sit­u­a­tion in which an inmate expects to be exe­cut­ed by lethal injec­tion until he sees the elec­tric chair set up in the exe­cu­tion cham­ber. Deputy Attorney General Jennifer Smith argued that exe­cu­tion by elec­tric chair is ​“just not going to hap­pen,” but Chief Justice Sharon Lee said that the inmates’ evi­dence regard­ing the unavail­abil­i­ty of exe­cu­tion drugs sug­gests, ​“exe­cu­tion (by the elec­tric chair) is very prob­a­ble.” On May 4, 1990, wit­ness­es to Tafero’s exe­cu­tion report­ed that a prob­lem with Florida’s elec­tric chair caused foot-high flames to shoot from Tafero’s head. Current had to be applied three times because the first two shocks failed to kill him.

Only after a sim­i­lar inci­dent occurred in 1997 did Florida final­ly decide to retire its elec­tric chair in 2000. State supreme courts in Georgia (2001) and Nebraska (2008) have declared that the use of the elec­tric chair vio­lates their state con­sti­tu­tions. A deci­sion in the Tennessee case is expect­ed in a few months.

(J. Latson, ​“A Gruesome Historical Argument Against the Death Penalty,” TIME, May 4, 2015; J. Satterfield, ​“Supreme Court hears chal­lenge to exe­cu­tion law,” Knoxville News Sentinel, May 6, 2015.) See Botched Executions and Methods of Execution.

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