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10 things you might not know about the death penalty By Mark Jacob and Stephan Benzkofer March 6, 2011 Gov. Pat Quinn must decide by March 18 whether Illinois will become the 16th state to ban the death penalty. As we await the answer, here are some strict sentences: 1. Nearly 75 percent of all countries have abolished the death penalty or haven't executed anybody for at least 10 years, according to Amnesty International. But eight of the 10 most populous countries (China, India, the U.S. and Indonesia leading the way) allow capital punishment. They account for 53 percent of the world's people. 2. Thomas Grasso, who was executed in Oklahoma in 1995 for strangling an 85-year-old woman on Christmas Eve with the wiring of her holiday lights, was picky about his final meal. His request: 24 steamed mussels, 24 steamed clams, a Burger King double cheeseburger, six barbecued spare ribs, two milkshakes, a can of SpaghettiOs with meatballs, half a pumpkin pie and strawberries and cream. He got almost everything he asked for, issuing a last statement reading: "I didn't get my SpaghettiOs, I got spaghetti. I want the press to know this." 3. The first person to die in the electric chair was William Kemmler in 1890. His death was a gruesome event that saw New York officials declare him dead, then hook him up again to finish the job when he started breathing. No less a personage than Thomas Edison, whose direct current technology was in a losing battle with alternating current, had lobbied New York to drop the noose and adopt the electric chair — powered by rival George Westinghouse's AC technology. To further associate his competitor's product with death, Edison suggested the best verb for such executions would be "Westinghoused." [ Thomas Edison used the electric chair in an attempt to get the public to continue using his DC electric system. Thomas Edison correctly pointed out that AC current is much more dangerous then DC current because AC will kill you at much lower voltages the DC. Of course the real problem with DC current is that you can't step the voltage up and down with transformers. Which means AC current has much lower power losses over long distance transmission lines. Which is why AC beat out DC over time. ] 4. How many people were burned at the stake during the witch trials in Salem, Mass.? None. Nineteen were hanged, and one was crushed to death by heavy stones. 5. Joseph Cadotte admitted killing his hunting partner in the 1890s in Montana, but insisted it was self-defense. Nevertheless, Cadotte was executed after a prosecutor found a novel argument. Pointing to a birthmark on the suspect's neck that resembled a rope burn, the prosecutor declared: "Nature evidently intended the man to die. He was born to be hung." 6. The third president of the United States once committed a crime punishable by death. Fourteen years before he moved into the White House, Thomas Jefferson was touring the Piedmont region of northern Italy. Encountering a special type of rice, he took it out of Italy even though such smuggling was a capital offense. 7. In ancient Egypt, killing a cat, even accidentally, could be punished by death. 8. If the ghost of "Terrible" Tommy O'Connor ever shows up, his gallows are waiting for him. The convicted cop killer escaped from the old Cook County jail in 1921, just days before he was to be hanged. Officials kept the gallows around for decades just in case he was ever recaptured. He wasn't. But not until 1977 did a judge rule the county could get rid of them. They went first to Donley's Wild West Town in Union, then in 2006, Ripley's Believe It or Not outbid the Chicago History Museum at an auction. Now the gallows sit in a warehouse in Florida, waiting to be displayed. 9. In parts of Asia, elephants were executioners. If the condemned person were lucky, he would be allowed to place his head on a pedestal to be crushed quickly. In other cases, he died more slowly, with the animal stepping on his limbs one by one and then pressing on his chest until he was dead. 10. When thieves were hanged in old England, their thumb and finger bones were sometimes sold as good luck charms. Likewise, spectators took the perspiration of the executed — known as "death sweat" — and rubbed it on their skin to treat warts and other skin problems. Mark Jacob is a deputy metro editor at the Tribune; Stephan Benzkofer is the newspaper's weekend editor. mjacob@tribune.com sbenzkofer@tribune.com Sources: "The A-Z of Punishment and Torture," by Irene Thompson; "Last Words of the Executed," by Robert K. Elder (lastwordsoftheexecuted.com); "Thomas Jefferson: A Life," by Willard Sterne Randall; "The Book of Useless Information," by Noel Botham; New York Correction History Society; "Executioner's Current: Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and the Invention of the Electric Chair," by Richard Moran; "Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World," by Jill Jonnes; "The Ancient Egyptian World," by Eric H. Cline and Jill Rubalcaba; Ripley's Believe It or Not!; Amnesty International; Tribune news services; salemwitchmuseum.com. |