Republicans, they pat themselves on the shoulders and proclaims that they are the lovers of life. They do everything possible to protect life, even if it means taking away a woman’s right to choose. But then again, Republicans hate life, and they go through every possible avenue to make sure that people dies – taking away their healthcare, taking away kid’s food and nutrition and now, bringing back previously discarded ways of killing people on death row.
They’re introducing legislation to bring back the firing squad and now, they’ve brought back the electric chair!
Tennessee lawmakers overwhelmingly passed the electric chair legislation in April, with the Senate voting 23-3 and the House 68-13 in favor of the bill.
Richard Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said Tennessee is the first state to enact a law to reintroduce the electric chair without giving prisoners an option.
“There are states that allow inmates to choose, but it is a very different matter for a state to impose a method like electrocution,” he said. “No other state has gone so far.”
This is unusual and might be both cruel and unusual punishment,” he said.
Other states allow for use of the electric chair, but at the inmate’s discretion.
“No state says what Tennessee says. This is forcing the inmate to use electrocution,” according to Dieter, who believes “the inmate would have an automatic Eighth Amendment challenge.”
The amendment protects against cruel and unusual punishment.
“The electric chair is clearly a brutal alternative,” Deiter said.
