The Patriot Post® · TN to Bring Back Electric Chair

The electric chair’s use to carry out the death penalty has gone out of style in the 21st century. But Tennessee is trying to bring Ol’ Sparky back. Thirty-two states in the union enact the death penalty. All of them use lethal injection. But as states struggle to find companies that will provide the soup of anesthetics, coupled with the botched execution in Oklahoma that caused some to question lethal injection’s gentility, Tennessee passed a law saying if it can’t find execution drugs, it will dust off its electric chair. The Associated Press reports there may be legal challenges to the new law, but “The Supreme Court has never declared a method of execution unconstitutional on the grounds that it is cruel and unusual. It upheld the firing squad in 1879, the electric chair in 1890 and lethal injection in 2008.” In this move, Tennessee can complete it’s role as law-enforcer unhampered from market forces. More…