You don't know the half of it, Chris. The NY Times had an article June 21, "Intimate View of the Death House: Exhibition on Sing Sing Tells of Last Meals and Final Moments," on a current exhibition concerning the 614 people (apparently a record for U.S. prisons) who were executed at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in New York State from 1891 to 1963, when the state's death penalty was suspended (it was reinstated in 1995 but has not yet been used again). Here's one excerpt from the Times' article:
"Death [from Sing Sing's electric chair] was not always instantaneous, Mr. [Scott] Christianson [a former prison official who organized the exhibition as a protest against the death penalty's reinstitution] pointed out. Sometimes the condemned person caught fire. There was a debate about whether death was caused by the electricity or the autopsy that quickly followed.
"One autopsy report from 1951 in the exhibition notes: 'The cerebellum seen from the posterior surfaces is opaque and grayish in color. It has a boiled appearance. The whole brain is uncomfortably warm to the touch.'
"'It is my contention that one of the reasons legal autopsies were made a requirement was not only an attempt to determine the nature of death, but also to ensure death,' Mr. Christianson said."
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