Is the electric chair no longer used a form of execution?

Question

Most criminals I hear of these days that get the death sentence are given a lethal injection. Was the electric chair and hanging deemed cruel and unusual punishment in the U.S.A.?

Answer 1

This article originally appeared in the Daily Mail on Tuesday August 7th 2001.

After 111 years, the electric chair heads for the museum as states opt for a lethal jab instead. The electric chair, America's most gruesome instrument of death for 111 years, is facing retirement.

One by one, states are pulling the plug on the chairs popularly known as Old Sparky. They are being removed from death chambers and handed over to museums as relics of an execution method whose time has passed.

It is now 13 months since the chair was last used and only two states, Nebraska and Alabama, retain it as the sole method of execution. In both these states legislators are about to switch to lethal injection.

Eight other states offer the condemned a choice between electrocution and lethal injection, but most are moving towards injection as the only acceptable form of execution. William Kemmier, who was convicted of the axe murder of his lover, was the first man to be electrocuted, in New York's Auburn State Prison on August 6, 1890.

Since then 4,300 people in 26 states have suffered the same fate. The last was Michael Clagett, 39, who was executed on July 6 last year in Virginia. The demise of Old Sparky has nothing to do with any softening of attitudes towards crime. More people are being executed than at any time in the nation's history, but there is a growing abhorrence to electrocution, which has been compared by opponents to burning people at the stake.

Answer 2

It is ...but it depends on the state. Some states still use the electric chair. There are a few states that still use a firing squad as an option for execution.  

Answer 3

No it is not. The current method used is lethal injection.  

Answer 4

Several states actually give the condemned a choice of the electric chair or lethal injection. Mighty nice of them, huh ?