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Electric Chair / Act Of God?

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Anonymous

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Someone once made a spurious claim that a certain American state has/ had a ruling which stated that should a Death Row inmate survive the first three electrical currents (allegedly the maximum legal amount) they were to be given an instant reprieve under an 'Act of God' clause.

Is anyone able to shed any light on the veracity of this obscure 'legality'?
 
There was a similar rule, back in the days of public hangings, I remember several people actually managing to escape execution by such events... rope breaking, drop mechanism jamming, &c
 
Chanubi>

Yeah, I've come across a few examples of that happening, but instead of bowing to the wishes of God and letting the victim go, the executioners usually just shrugged and hanged/ shot/ zapped them again...
 
wasn't there some pirate or highwayman who got let off on such a technicality? I don't remember his name, or when it happened...
 
chanubi said:
wasn't there some pirate or highwayman who got let off on such a technicality? I don't remember his name, or when it happened...

According to popular myth, upon his capture, Captain Kidd (famous pirate of the Spanish Maine) survived two consecutive attempts at hanging. The first time, the mechanism jammed, the second time, the knot wedged open or the rope snapped or some such and he just plummetted to the ground. If I remember rightly, the crowd were all for letting him go at this point, citing some kind of Act Of God on his behalf, but sadly, that morning he'd got so drunk to cope with the prospect of being hanged that he just sat there giggling , unable to walk, let alone run off into the sunset, until the executioners picked him up and had another go, which was far more effective.
 
101 said:
According to popular myth, upon his capture, Captain Kidd (famous pirate of the Spanish Maine) survived two consecutive attempts at hanging.
From Johnson's A General History of the Robberies & Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates:
From the Notes...
Kidd made a speech to the huge crowd which had gathered on the Execution Dock. The rope broke when he was turned off the scaffold and he fell to the ground still conscious. He was hanged a second time by being pushed from a ladder leaning against the gallows. His dead body was hung in chains from a gibbet at Tilbury Point in the Thames Estuary.


BTW; Since I'm a horrible pedant I must point out that Kidd's allegedly piratical activities (I tend to the view he was largely a scapegoat rather than a true pirate) were limited to the Indian Ocean and Madegascar -he only entered American waters -in the region of New York rather than the Caribbean, IIRC- in search of legitimate supplies, not prey.
 
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There is no such rule in the American legal / penal system, death sentences are clearly stated to be carried out until the condemned person's death is accomplished, and the double jeopardy clause applies only to prosecution (not satisfaction of the sentence handed down upon conviction).

http://mentalfloss.com/article/19346/what-happens-if-criminal-survives-execution

The US Supreme Court rendered a decision in the 1947 Willie Francis case:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Francis

... stating repeated execution attempts did not constitute "cruel and unusual punishment" ...

The cruelty against which the Constitution protects a convicted man is cruelty inherent in the method of punishment, not the necessary suffering involved in any method employed to extinguish life humanely. The fact that an unforeseeable accident prevented the prompt consummation of the sentence cannot, it seems to us, add an element of cruelty to a subsequent execution.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/06/romell-broom-ohio-execution/

The list of botched execution examples at the Death Penalty Information Center:

https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions/botched-executions

... includes 3 examples of electrocutions that required 3 or more "jolts" (rounds) to achieve death.
 
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The 'Act of God' reprieve is also a major plot point in the utterly fantastic New Statesman special 'Who Shot Alan B'Stard'.
 
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lt sounds like a mangled UL based on the true story of John “Babbacombe” Lee, “The Man They Couldn’t Hang.”

Interestingly, recent research apparently suggests that Lee died in the USA, and is buried in Milwaukee. Perhaps that’s the source of the US UL?

maximus otter
 
This claptrap likely comes from the same place that holds a boxer's or other martial artist's have to be registered with the police as deadly weapons. Someone tried to tell me this once and got very pissed-off when I said it was not true.

Hands of a boxer can be considered deadly weapons but only in the event that the boxer is accused of a criminal assault and there is no way they could be registered as such. Most jurisdictions make possession of certain deadly weapons by felons illegal and it would obviously not be charge someone, even a felon, for possessing his own hands.
 
This claptrap likely comes from the same place that holds a boxer's or other martial artist's have to be registered with the police as deadly weapons. Someone tried to tell me this once and got very pissed-off when I said it was not true.

Someone I worked with tried to sell me that line too. By the time he came out with this particular variety of tripe I'd already perfected the art of just turning my back and walking away from him. He never took offence.
 
I read the book "The Man They Couldn't Hang: The True Story of John Lee" about John "Babbacombe" Lee a couple of years ago. It was very interesting, and it seems from accounts of the attempted hanging that Lee behaved with complete sang froid throughout the experience. From descriptions in the book the prison curate and doctor were both nervous wrecks by the time of the third attempted hanging, whilst Lee was completely calm and collected throughout.

It also appears to suggest that the actual murderer might have been Lee's sister's boyfriend. Whilst Lee had been fired from his job in the victim's household prior to the murder being committed, she still worked there, and may have had a habit of smuggling her lover into the house after the household was asleep. Had the victim found them in flagrante delicto and been stabbed by the sister or boyfriend as a result?
 
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