An electric chair (also known as an electrical chair or execution chair) is a specialized device used for execution through electrocution. The condemned prisoner is strapped to a custom wooden chair and electrocuted via electrodes attached to the head and legs. Alfred P. Southwick, a dentist in Buffalo, New York, conceived this execution method in 1881. It was developed over the next decade, promoted by Southwick as a more humane alternative to conventional executions, particularly hanging. First used in 1890, the electric chair has become a symbol of capital punishment in the United States.
The electric chair was once thought to cause death through cerebral damage, but it was scientifically established in 1899 that death primarily results from ventricular fibrillation and cardiac arrest. It became a common method of capital punishment in the United States and also extensively in the Philippines, but its use has substantially declined with the adoption of lethal injection which was perceived as more humane and more practical.
As of 2026, electrocution is a legal method of capital punishment in the following U.S. states: Alabama: as a choice between the default lethal injection, nitrogen hypoxia, and electrocution (see Capital punishment in Alabama). Florida: as a choice between the default lethal injection and electrocution (see Capital punishment in Florida). Kentucky: only as a choice between the default lethal injection and electrocution for inmates sentenced before March 31, 1998, of which there are only fifteen remaining; or if lethal injection is found to be unconstitutional (see Capital punishment in Kentucky). Louisiana: decided by the Secretary of the Department of Public Safety and Corrections out of lethal injection, nitrogen hypoxia, and electrocution (see Capital punishment in Louisiana). Mississippi: decided by the Commissioner of the Department of Corrections out of the preferred lethal injection, nitrogen hypoxia, firing squad, and electrocution (see Capital punishment in Mississippi). Oklahoma: to be used only as a method if prior methods in the order of the default lethal injection, nitrogen hypoxia, electrocution, and firing squad are unavailable or found to be unconstitutional (see Capital punishment in Oklahoma). South Carolina: as the default method with lethal injection and firing squad only as a choice by the inmate (see Capital punishment in South Carolina). Tennessee: as a choice between the default lethal injection and electrocution for inmates sentenced before January 1, 1999, or if lethal injection is unavailable or found to be unconstitutional (see Capital punishment in Tennessee).
Background Invention In the late 1870s to early 1880s, the introduction of arc lighting, a type of outdoor street lighting that required high voltages in the range of 3000–6000 volts, was followed by multiple stories in newspapers about how the high voltages used were killing people, usually unwary linemen; it was seen as a strange new phenomenon that seemed to instantaneously strike a victim dead without leaving a mark.Randall E. Stross, The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World, Crown/Archetype – 2007, page 171–173 One of these accidents, in Buffalo, New York, on August 7, 1881, led to the inception of the electric chair. That evening, a drunken dock worker named George Lemuel Smith, looking for the thrill of a tingling sensation he had noticed when grabbing the guard rail in a Brush Electric Company arc lighting power house, managed to sneak his way back into the plant at night and grabbed the brush and ground of a large electric dynamo,Mike Winchell, The Electric War: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Light the World, Henry Holt and Company – 2019, page 10 then dying instantly. The coroner who investigated the case brought it up that year at a local Buffalo scientific society. Another member attending that lecture, Alfred P. Southwick, a dentist who had a technical background, thought some application could be found for the curious phenomenon.
Southwick joined physician George E. Fell and the head of the Buffalo ASPCA in a series of experiments electrocuting hundreds of stray dogs. They ran trials with the dog in and out of water, and varied the electrode type and placement until they came up with a repeatable method to euthanize animals using electricity. Southwick went on in the early 1880s to advocate that this method be used as a more humane replacement for hanging in capital punishment cases, coming to national attention when he published his ideas in scientific journals in 1882 and 1883. He worked out calculations based on the dog experiments conducted, trying to develop a scaled-up method that would work on humans. Early on in his designs, he adopted a modified version of the dental chair as a way to restrain the condemned, a device that from then on would be called the electric chair.
Gerry Commission After a series of botched hangings in the United States, there was mounting criticism of that form of capital punishment and the death penalty in general. In 1886, newly elected New York State governor David B. Hill set up a three-member death penalty commission, which was chaired by the human rights advocate and reformer Elbridge Thomas Gerry and included New York lawyer and politician Matthew Hale and Southwick, to investigate a more humane way of executing condemned criminals.Richard Moran, Executioner's Current: Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and the Invention of the Electric Chair, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group – 2007, page 74
The commission members surveyed the history of execution and sent out a fact-finding questionnaire to government officials, lawyers, and medical experts all around the state asking for their opinion. A slight majority of respondents recommended hanging over electrocution, with a few instead recommending the abolition of capital punishment. The commission also contacted electrical experts, including Thomson-Houston Electric Company's Elihu Thomson (who recommended high voltage AC connected to the head and the spine) and the inventor Thomas Edison (who also recommended AC, as well as using a Westinghouse generator).Anthony Galvin, Old Sparky: The Electric Chair and the History of the Death Penalty, Skyhorse Publishing – 2015, pages 30–45Jill Jonnes, Empires Of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, And The Race To Electrify The World, Random House – 2004, page 420 They also attended electrocutions of dogs by George Fell who had worked with Southwick in the early 1880s experiments. Fell was conducting further experiments, electrocuting anesthetized vivisected dogs trying to discern exactly how electricity killed a subject.Richard Moran, Executioner's Current: Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and the Invention of the Electric Chair, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group – 2007, page 4
In 1888, the Commission recommended electrocution using Southwick's electric chair idea with metal conductors attached to the condemned person's head and feet. They further recommended that executions be handled by the state instead of the individual counties with three electric chairs set up at the Auburn, Clinton, and Sing Sing prisons. A bill following these recommendations passed the legislature and was signed by Governor Hill on June 4, 1888, set to go into effect on January 1, 1889.
New York Medico-Legal Commission The bill itself contained no details on the type or amount of electricity that should be used and the New York Medico-Legal Society, an informal society composed of doctors and lawyers, was given the task of determining these factors. In September 1888, a committee was formed and recommended 3000 volts, although the type of electricity, direct current (DC) or alternating current (AC), was not determined, and since tests up to that point had been done on animals smaller than humans (dogs), some members were unsure that the lethality of AC had been conclusively proven to be effective.Richard Moran, Executioner's Current: Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and the Invention of the Electric Chair, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group – 2007, page 102
At this point, the state's efforts to design the electric chair became intermixed with what has come to be known as the war of the currents, a competition between Thomas Edison's direct current power system and George Westinghouse's alternating current based system. The two companies had been competing commercially since 1886 and a series of events had turned it into an all-out media war in 1888. The committee head, neurologist Frederick Peterson, enlisted the services of Harold P. Brown as a consultant. Brown had been on his own crusade against alternating current after the shoddy installation of pole-mounted AC arc lighting lines in New York City had caused several deaths in early 1888. Peterson had been an assistant at Brown's July 1888 public electrocution of dogs with AC at Columbia College, an attempt by Brown to prove AC was more deadly than DC. Technical assistance in these demonstrations was provided by Thomas Edison's West Orange laboratory and there grew to be some form of collusion between Edison Electric and Brown.Craig Brandon, The Electric Chair: An Unnatural American History, McFarland – 1999, pages 70 and 261Jill Jonnes, Empires Of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, And The Race To Electrify The World, Random House – 2004, page 166W. Bernard Carlson, Innovation as a Social Process: Elihu Thomson and the Rise of General Electric, Cambridge University Press – 2003, page 285 Back at West Orange on December 5, 1888, Brown set up an experiment with members of the press, members of the Medico-Legal Society including Elbridge Gerry who was also chairman of the death penalty commission, and Thomas Edison looking on. Brown used alternating current for all of his tests on animals larger than a human, including 4 calves and a lame horse, all dispatched with 750 volts of AC.Mark Essig, Edison and the Electric Chair: A Story of Light and Death, Bloomsbury Publishing USA – 2009, pages 152–155 Based on these results the Medico-Legal Society recommended the use of 1000–1500 volts of alternating current for executions and newspapers noted the AC used was half the voltage used in the power lines over the streets of American cities. Westinghouse criticized these tests as a skewed self-serving demonstration designed to be a direct attack on alternating current and accused Brown of being in the employ of Edison.Craig Brandon The Electric Chair: An Unnatural American History page 82