cruel and unusual

A true story for Hallowe'en

It was 6:38am on August 6^th, 1890, as the prisoner entered the room, hands bound, between two prison guards. He was surprised how many had come to witness his death.

He had been calm since being woken an hour and a half earlier, offering no resistance. He had dressed himself quickly, formally, in his Sunday best suit, white shirt and tie. They brought him breakfast, which he ate heartily, and a priest, who said a prayer. A 'trusty' came and shaved his head. The dark corridors and cells of New York State's Auburn Prison were cool and stale at this early hour, as he was taken to the execution chamber, but with a sense of the stifling heat to come.

Records show there were seventeen present, including the Warden, Charles Durston. William Kemmler faced him and Durston nodded, a little tense. He knew this day would go down in history. Kemmler remained calm, almost serene. He looked at the chair in the centre of the room.

"Gentlemen, I wish you all good luck. I believe I am going to a good place, and I am ready to go," he said, and without prompting, sat down.

One of the guards made him stand again and cut a hole in his suit near the base of his spine, to attach one of the electrodes. The prisoner sat again and the metal restraint was attached to his head.

He almost smiled. "Take it easy and do it properly, I'm in no hurry." His arms and legs were strapped to the chair, a cloth hood was placed over his head.

"Goodbye, William," said Durston, as he signalled the electrician to throw the switch.

William Kemmler was a second generation native of Philadelphia, a slender youth with dark brown hair. Illiterate, with little schooling, he worked at first in his father's butcher shop. He grew up speaking both English and German, the language of his parents. They were both known to be alcoholics: his father died after a drunken brawl and his mother from liver failure. Kemmler.

After his parents died and the business was lost, he became a peddlar, and earned enough money to buy a horse and cart after moving to Buffalo, where he sold vegetables off the back of the cart. But he had also begun to turn to drink and – with the nickname "Philadelphia Billy" – soon developed a reputation for binge drinking and stupid drunken episodes, one of which led to the destruction of his cart and his stock. He took up with Tillie Ziegler, and they started to live together. At the trial she would be refeerred to as his common law wife.

On March 29, 1888, he was recovering from a drinking binge the night before when he became enraged with Tiller. He accused her of stealing from him and preparing to run away with a friend of his. When the argument reached a peak, Kemmler calmly grabbed a hatchet, and returned to the house. He struck Tillie repeatedly, killing her. He then went to a neighbor's house and announced he had just murdered his girlfriend. Every report describes him as 'calm', 'rational', 'unemotional' – a classic sociopath.

The trial proceeded quickly. He was convicted of first-degree murder on May 10. Three days later he was sentenced to death. Two months before the murder, New York introduced a new execution law which replaced hanging. The new method was death by the wonderful new force then becoming known for the first time: death by electricity. Soon after the new law was enacted, an electric chair – a device invented a few years earlier by a Buffalo dentist – was installed at the Auburn state prison, and this is where Kemmler was consigned after pleading guilty. He would become the first person in the world to be killed by electric chair.

An appeal was launched, not by Kemmler, but by the infant electricity industry, who obviously thought this was bad PR. The appeal claimed that the electric chair violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. The appeal went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, who ruled electrocution was not a cruel and unusual punishment.

So the execution proceeded. The generator was charged to one thousand volts, which was assumed to be adequate to induce quick unconsciousness and cardiac arrest. The chair had already been thoroughly tested; a horse had been successfully electrocuted the day before. The charge was fed to Kemmler for 17 seconds. The power was turned off, one of the two doctors present stepped forward and Kemmler was declared dead.

However, with an audible gasp, witnesses suddenly saw Kemmler's chest rise and fall – he was still breathing. Both doctors confirmed Kemmler was still alive, and one of them reportedly called out, "Have the current turned on again, quick—no delay,” the shaking of his voice betraying shock and horror, in stark contrast to Kemmler's earlier calm.

It took some time to recharge the generator, this time up to 2,000 volts. Blood vessels under the skin ruptured and acording to the New York Times,

"an awful odor began to permeate the death chamber, and then, as though to cap the climax of this fearful sight, it was seen that the hair under and around the electrode on the head and the flesh under and around the electrode at the base of the spine was singeing. The stench was unbearable."

Several witnesses panicked and unsuccessfully tried to escape from the room, but the room had been locked. In all, the entire execution took eight minutes until death was finally achieved. Papers across the country outdid each other with sensational headlines and stories. A reporter who witnessed it described it as "an awful spectacle, far worse than hanging." The electrician reportedly commented: "They would have done better using an axe.” Yet death by electric chair was not and still to this day in some states is not regarded as cruel and unusual.