Electric Chair - History - Notable Persons and Events

Notable Persons and Events

Notable deaths by electric chair include: George Stinney, Leon Czolgosz, Bruno Hauptmann, Hans B. Schmidt, Harry Pierpont, Giuseppe Zangara, Sacco and Vanzetti, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Lepke Buchalter, Anna Marie Hahn, Donald Henry Gaskins, Albert Fish, Charles Starkweather, Gerald Stano, Larry Gene Bell and Ted Bundy. There was a botched electrocution at Sing Sing in 1903: Fred Van Wormer was electrocuted and pronounced dead, but upon arrival to the autopsy room, Wormer began breathing once again. The executioner, who had gone home, was called back to re-electrocute Wormer; upon his return, Wormer had officially died. Nonetheless, Wormer's corpse was set into the chair again and electrocuted with 1700 volts for thirty seconds.

Maria Barbella was the first woman sentenced to death by the electric chair; however, she was released on appeal.

The electrocution of housewife Ruth Snyder at Sing Sing on the evening of January 12, 1928, for the March 1927 murder of her husband was made famous when news photographer Tom Howard, working for the New York Daily News, smuggled a hidden camera into the death chamber and photographed her in the electric chair as the current was turned on. The photograph was a front-page sensation the following morning, and remains one of the most famous newspaper photographs of all time.

A record was set on July 13, 1928, when seven men were executed consecutively in the electric chair at the Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville. In 1942, six Germans convicted of espionage in the Quirin case were executed in one day in the District of Columbia jail electric chair.

James French was executed on August 10, 1966, the last person electrocuted until 1979. French was the first person executed in Oklahoma since Richard Dare was electrocuted June 1, 1963 and the only person executed in 1966.

On May 25, 1979, John Arthur Spenkelink became the first electrocuted person after the Gregg v. Georgia decision by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1976. He was the first person to be executed in the United States in this manner since 1966. However, the last person to be executed via the electric chair without the choice of an alternative method was Lynda Lyon Block on May 10, 2002 in Alabama.