Old Sparky

Old Sparky is the nickname of the electric chairs in Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. Old Betsy was the nickname of the electric chair that was used in Indiana, and Old Smokey is the nickname of the electric chairs used in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. "Old Sparky" is sometimes used to refer to electric chairs in general, and not one of a specific state.

Connecticut legislated lethal injection as its sole method of execution in 1995. The last person executed by electrocution was Joseph "Mad Dog" Taborsky in May 1960. Connecticut's "Old Sparky" has not been tested since it was moved from Wethersfield to the Connecticut Correctional Institution in Somers in 1962, and prison officials claim the prison's electrical system cannot handle it.

The electric chair was the sole means of execution in Florida from 1924 until 2000, when the Florida Legislature, under pressure from the Supreme Court of the United States, signed lethal injection into law. Although no one has been executed in this manner since 1999, prisoners awaiting execution on Florida's death row may still be electrocuted at their request. It is currently located in Florida State Prison on the outskirts of Starke. It was known for frequent malfunctions in the 1990s, namely in the cases of Jesse Tafero (executed May 4, 1990), Pedro Medina (executed March 25, 1997) and Allen Lee Davis (executed July 8, 1999). Reportedly, 6-inch flames shot out of Tafero's head and 12-inch flames shot out of Medina's head, raising the question whether use of the electric chair was "cruel and unusual punishment". After the Medina execution, which was reportedly painless in spite of the flames, Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth commented, "People who wish to commit murder, they'd better not do it in the state of Florida because we may have a problem with the electric chair."

Investigators have been unable to identify the cause of the problems. The wooden chair had been replaced in early 1999 to accommodate Davis's girth. The electrical components remained the same for the system.

To ensure proper contact between the inmate's head and the electrode, sponge soaked with saline solution stuffed between the two was necessary. In the Tafero incident, a natural sponge was replaced with a synthetic sponge that caught fire during the execution. In the Medina incident, prison officials apparently did not properly soak the sponge in saline solution and it caught fire as well. Photographs provided after Davis' execution showed that he suffered a bloody nose during the event.

The 1999 execution of Allen Lee Davis incited outrage after witnesses saw his white shirt rapidly turn red with blood during his execution. Prison officials later determined the blood came from a profuse nosebleed, most likely caused by an improperly fitted head strap. The source of the blood was not evident to witnesses during execution, because Davis's head was covered with a traditional hood. A prison inspector general took photographs of Davis's bloody body, still strapped in the chair, shortly after execution. These photographs later became key evidence in several cases mounting yet another challenge to the constitutionality of the electric chair. These lawsuits ultimately came to the Supreme Court of Florida in the fall of 1999, when a majority (4 of the 7 Justices) found that the electric chair was constitutional in a case brought by death row inmate Thomas Provenzano. One of the dissenting Justices, Leander J. Shaw Jr., took the extraordinary step of attaching to his opinion three color photographs of Davis's bloody body strapped in the chair. This publication marked the first time those photographs had surfaced on the Internet or, for that matter, anywhere outside court and prison files.

The execution contributed to the debate over Florida's adherence to electrocution and to the international debate over capital punishment in general. The Florida Supreme Court's Web servers repeatedly crashed under the demand for access to the photographs, reputed to be the first actual photographs of an American state execution in decades. The images were used during a protest demonstration in Madrid in support of a Spaniard on Florida's death row. Some death penalty supporters in the United States viewed the photographs as a deterrent, apparently believing they had been posted on the Web site as a warning to all potentially dangerous criminals.

Some Florida politicians vowed to never eliminate the electric chair despite the debate, but events rapidly changed after the Supreme Court of the United States agreed to hear an appeal from the Florida Supreme Court's split decision upholding electrocution. The nation's high court had declined to review appeals after the prior three malfunctions, so observers concluded that the nation's high court now had come to view Florida's death penalty problems more dimly. Partly on the advice of Attorney General Butterworth, Florida's Governor Jeb Bush summoned the legislature into special session and in early 2000 it quickly approved lethal injection as the means of execution that must be used unless the inmate requests electrocution. The Attorney General then notified the Federal court and it agreed to dismiss the case based on the change in law.