When things go wrong.
Jimmy Lee Gray Mississippi - September 2nd. 1983.
Eight minutes after the gas had been released officials cleared the witnesses from the viewing area as Gray continued to convulse. He is reported to have gasped eleven times during this period. Jimmy Lee Gray died banging his head against the steel pole behind the chair.
Donald Eugene Harding Arizona - April 6th. 1992.

At 12:18. the sodium cyanide pellets dropped into the vat beneath Harding's chair containing six quarts of distilled water and six pints of sulfuric acid. Cameron Harper, a reporter for KTVK-TV said, "I watched Harding go into violent spasms for 57 seconds. Then he began to convulse less frequently. His back muscles rippled. The spasms grew less violent. I timed them as ending six minutes and 37 seconds after they began. His head went down in little jerking motions. Obviously, the gentlemen was suffering. This was a violent death, make no mistake about it." Harper went on, "It was an ugly event. We put animals to death more humanely. This was not a clean and simple death". Another Witness, Carla McClain, a reporter for the Tucson Citizen said, "Harding's death was extremely violent. He was in great pain.

I heard him gasp and moan. I saw his body turn from red to purple."
Arguably the cruelest method of execution, the gas chamber has now been outlawed, at least in California, after the American Civil Liberties Union took the California Department of Corrections to court in San Francisco in 1994 on behalf of 375 condemned inmates on San Quentin's death row, saying that the gas chamber violates the U.S. Constitution's ban against cruel and unusual punishment because it inflicts needless pain and suffering.
District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel ruled on October 5th 1994 that the gas chamber is an inhumane method of punishment and thus outlawed the practice in California.
On February 21st 1996 a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld the her ruling that gas chamber executions in California violated the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution because there was a risk that an inmate could suffer "horrible pain" for up to several minutes.
"The district court's findings of extreme pain, the length of time this extreme pain lasts, and the substantial risk that inmates will suffer this extreme pain for several minutes require the conclusion that execution by lethal gas is cruel and unusual," Judge Harry Pregerson wrote.

"This decision is the death knell for the gas chamber in the United States," predicted Michael Laurence, an attorney who fought to stop the use of the gas chamber.
Only time will tell will tell whether the gas chamber will survive into the 21st century. It may because there are a substantial number of prisoners on death row who have the legal right to insist upon being gassed (as Walter LeGrand did in 1999) Strangely gassing is seen as humane and an acceptable method of execution by a substantial number of women under 25 who responded to my survey. I have no idea why this should be.
The only other users of execution by lethal gas were, of course, the Nazis during World War 2 when they killed several million people using carbon monoxide or cyanide gas.

The electric chair.
The electric chair was introduced as a "modern" and humane alternative to hanging by New York state in 1890. It soon became the preferred method of execution in the majority of retentionist states, although not all continued to use it. Ohio was the second state to introduce the electric chair, in 1896 - 17 year old William Hass becoming its first victim the following year. Massachusetts followed in 1898, with New Jersey in 1906, with Virginia in 1908 and North Carolina in 1910.
4,308 people have been electrocuted in 27 states between 1890 and 1966 (See analysis by state below). Most of these executions were for murder, including over 600 at New York's famous Sing Sing prison (the largest number of executions at any single US prison). However 458 men have been put to death in the electric chair for rape and at least one man and one woman (the Rosenbergs) for treason. Six people were electrocuted for wartime sabotage in Washington DC on August 8th 1942. A further 148 men and two women have been electrocuted (all for murder) since the resumption of executions in 1977 up to the end of 2002, bringing the total to 4434 men and 24 women.

Alabama carried out most of the post Furman electrocutions, with 4 in 2000. Nationwide there were no electrocutions in 2001 and both Georgia and Ohio removed electrocution as an option during that year. Alabama executed one person in its electric chair in 2002.
After the particularly cruel hanging of 40 year old murderess, Roxalana Druse in New York in 1887, who took 15 minutes to strangle to death, the state Governor, David B Hill, was searching for a more acceptable form of execution. He set up a legislative committee in 1886 to examine other methods. At that time there was a lot of interest and experimentation with electricity so it was perhaps obvious that a politician would opt for a new, "more scientific", method such as electrocution.
The first electric chair was designed in 1888/9. Although the stated reason for its development was that it was to be a more humane method of execution, there was also another interesting reason.