The Electric Chair

Before 1981 there had only been three executions in the United States since the confusing 5-4 Supreme Court decision in 1976 which invalidated all existing state death penalty laws. Gary Mark Gilmore was executed by a firing squad in Utah in 1977, and Jesse Bishop went to the gas chamber in Nevada in 1979 then there was John Spenkelink who in 1979 was electrocuted in Florida. Then in 1981 Steven Timothy Judy was electrocuted for the capital punishment of raping and strangling Terry Lee Chasteen who was on the side of the road with her three children when their car stalled. He then drowned each of the children one by one in a nearby creek. This would be the beginning of a flood of executions mainly in the state of Texas.
The night that Judy was to be executed, a rally of about 200 liberal activist stood outside in the wind and rain shouting, “Burn, Judy burn!” On that March night the United States started off on a new journey. Executions would no longer make international new...