전기 의자 사형 집행의 공포

### 전기 의자의 공포: 잘못된 사형 집행에 대한 역사적 관점
* ⚖ 1890년부터 2010년까지 미국 전체 사형 집행의 약 **3%는 치명적인 주사, 교수형, 극심한 고통을 유발하는 전기의자 사건 등 잘못된 방식**으로 이루어졌습니다.
* 🔌 살인죄로 유죄 판결을 받은 16세의 윌리 프란시스는 전기의자에서 악명 높은 사형 집행을 경험했는데, 그는 **"바늘과 핀이 수 백, 수 천 개가 자신을 찌르는 듯한 느낌"**을 받았다고 묘사했습니다.
* '그루썸 거티'로 알려진 이 전동 의자는 **키가 큰 나무 등받이와 최소한의 편안함**으로 디자인되어 겉모습과 달리 섬뜩한 목적을 반영합니다.
* 🍂 사형 집행이 잘못되는 동안 프란시스는 도움을 요청하는 비명을 질렀는데, 일반적으로 사용되는 **전압은 피해자를 즉시 무력화**시켜 고통과 고통의 악순환으로 이어지기 때문에 이례적인 일이었습니다.
* ⚰ 첫 번째 사형 집행 실패 후, 프란시스는 자신의 운명을 받아들였고 결국 **1947년 5월 9일, 변호사가 형벌의 잔인함에 대해 항변**했지만 결국 사형을 집행당했습니다.
* ⚡ 일반적인 사형 집행에서 수감자들은 **삭발, 결박, 약 2,000볼트의 전기 감전 등 잔인한 과정**을 견디며 심각한 신체적 외상과 장기간의 고통을 겪습니다.
* 🔥 많은 전기의자 피해자들이 **화염에 휩싸이거나 의식이 장시간 유지**되는 등 끔찍한 결과를 겪었으며, 이로 인해 사후에 끔찍한 상태를 겪기도 했습니다.
* 🏛 한때 전기의자는 더 인도적인 선택으로 여겨졌지만, **2024년 현재 미국 내 일부 주에서만 사형 집행 방법**으로 계속 사용하고 있을 정도로 야만적인 것으로 여겨지고 있습니다.

윌리 프랜시스는 전기의자에서 끔찍한 사형 집행을 견디며 사형 제도의 끔찍한 현실을 강조했습니다.

From 1890 to 2010, around 3% of all U.S. executions were botched. Lethal injections that didn’t work, hangings where the victim kept gasping for air for over half an hour, and electric chair visits that just didn’t do enough. Willie Francis was one of the 84 people subjected to a botched electric chair execution. His words at the start of the video give us just a small glimpse into the agony experienced by death row inmates in their final seconds and minutes, but what he experienced was just a fraction of the true horrors of the chair. At just 16 years old, Willie was convicted for the murder of Andrew Thomas, a local pharmacist in Louisiana. In 1944, Thomas had been shot and killed. Almost a whole year went by with nobody getting to the bottom of who did it, until police happened upon a black

teenage boy who used to work at the pharmacy. Despite him being 15 at the time of the murder, Willie was sentenced to death, and for the state he was in, that meant the electric chair. Nicknamed Gruesome Gertie, the chair that Willie Francis was strapped into looked severe. Now living in a museum for all of the public to go and see, it has a tall straight wooden back and little in the way of comfort. Why would it? It’s being used to kill people. And yet, there is an element of artistry to it. It’s by no means an arthouse chair in a celebrity’s home but it is not simply a large wooden board either. It has shape and form. Somebody designed it and chose how it should look. Someone sanded it down and varnished it so that no one would get splinters from it. Even as their bodies writhed and thrashed in agony.

The two men appointed to set up the chair correctly had turned up to work drunk. In their inebriated state, they had made some mistakes assembling the thing. Willie, of course, didn’t know this as he took his seat on the hard wooden boards, but as the executioner flipped the switch, it was evident that something was wrong. It felt like a hundred and a thousand needles and pins were pricking in me all over, and my left leg felt like somebody was cutting it with a razor blade. I could feel my arms jumping at my sides … I thought for a minute I was going to knock the chair over … I think I must have hollered for them to stop. They say I said, 'Take it off! Take it off!' I know that was certainly what I wanted them to do—turn it off. Willie shouldn’t have been able to speak. Normally, the voltages passed

through the victims are upwards of 2,000 for the initial shock. There’s little the victims can do but spasm and burn, yet Willie was able to yell out for help. The needles and pinpricks all over his body, as painful as they would have been, seem to fall short of the pain you’d expect from an effective execution. The executioners shut the chair off, and Willie returned to his cell. Try as they might, his lawyer could do little to help his fate. They tried to use what had happened as evidence of ‘cruel and unusual punishment,’ and tried to argue that he had already been ‘executed’ once and thus had fulfilled his sentence, and it wasn’t his fault he hadn’t died. Much to everyone’s surprise, however, Willie Francis himself persuaded his lawyer to drop it. He didn’t want to go through another trial and had accepted his fate. It was his intention

to go to meet the Lord with his “Sunday pants and Sunday heart.” He was executed on May 9th, 1947. So to the main question, what does it feel like to sit in the electric chair? Not a botched attempt like Willie Francis’s first execution; let’s take a look at what would have happened at his second execution. Brace yourself; it’s probably much worse than you are imagining. Put yourself in Willie Francis’s shoes, and let’s walk you through step by step what he would have experienced. The first thing happens before you go to the execution chamber. You’ll be stripped by the guards, and one of them will shave you. Any hair on your head will be unceremoniously chopped off and then shaved down to the skin. They likely won’t care about doing this part gently. If you ask nicely, they might only shave out the patch they need to,

but we probably wouldn’t recommend keeping any hair for reasons you’ll soon find out. It’s not just your head hair, either. Some electric chairs require that your back be clean shaven, and for others, it will be your legs. As soon as you walk into the chamber, you can see why that is. The points they’ve shaved on your body are where the electrodes will connect. These are the points where the electric current will surge into your body. If you are still able to stand through the waves of terror washing through you, it’s time to go over and take your seat. If you don’t do it yourself, you’ll be forced into it. They have leather straps all over the chair that the guards will one-by-one tie around you, locking you in place. You brace yourself for the cool metal electrodes to touch your skin, but they don’t. Instead, something wet and squishy presses against the top of your

head and small of your back. A couple of sponges soaked in salt water. It’s important that the executioners get this part right. If the sponges are too wet, then the chair will short-circuit before it’s had a chance to kill you. If they’re too dry, then there will be too much resistance, and the current will be too low to kill you. The sponges may even catch fire, which has happened a number of times and led to botched executions. The last thing they’ll do is put a blindfold on you before they all leave you alone in the room. Standing on the other side of the glass in the observation room, the executioner will flip the switch. Instantaneously, around 2,000 volts course through your body. The electric current is so strong that you immediately lose control of all of your muscles. Your hands clench around the arms of the chair, your bowels empty themselves,

and your limbs thrash against the restraints so violently that you dislocate and break multiple bones. Your body is quite literally trying to tear itself free from the agonizing pain. You will likely vomit, and there will probably be blood in it as your stomach muscles convulse and panic. Every nerve in your body is suddenly overwhelmed with electrical signals. Your nervous system relies on electricity to work and uses it as the primary way of communicating pain. With electricity flooding every inch of your body, every nerve goes into meltdown. Unfortunately, the electric chair doesn’t necessarily kill very fast. This first wave of electricity will last for 30 seconds. At this point, the executioner will shut it off and allow the doctors to enter the room to check on the victim. They themselves will need to wait before they can touch the body. Once it has cooled, they check the victim’s heart. If it is still beating, they withdraw,

and another round of electricity is administered. This cycle continues until the heart gives out. For anyone observing these later stages of the execution, it becomes increasingly more disturbing to watch. Willie Francis was not the only victim of a botched execution by an electric chair. Some victims burst into flames from the head or the legs. For others, their blood vessels ruptured beneath the skin, causing intense bruising and swelling, as well as heavy bleeding from their nostrils. In some cases, the victims survive for a couple of minutes, but in many, they last for a lot longer. One woman was still alive 24 minutes after the initial shock was carried out. Morticians who carry out an autopsy on the bodies afterward have to experience something truly horrific. They have to wait for the body to cool entirely before beginning, which can take a while, depending on how long the person was shocked.

The parts of the body where the electrodes touched are often burnt away entirely, all the way down to the bone, leaving smoldering flesh in an ugly ring around the site. The electric chair is designed to kill instantly by shocking the heart and the brain, but this does not always work. The secondary kill method, which always succeeds eventually, is to cook the vital organs until they are no longer functional. Many victims, especially those of botched executions, die from this secondary method. If you cut open the skull of an electric chair victim, you may well find that the brain resting in their head has been cooked through. If the victim does not lose consciousness quickly enough, they may be forced to sit there and experience what it feels like to slowly have their brain shutting off as different lobes cook. The electric chair was intended to be safer and more humane than execution methods of the past.

but many have grown to see it as being far more extreme and barbaric. As such, most states in the US no longer use the electric chair as an execution method. As of 2024, the only places that still reserve the electric chair as an option for execution are the U.S. states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Electrocution is also authorized in Florida if lethal injection is found unconstitutional. For the most part, states have tried to switch over to lethal injection. The cocktail of chemicals administered into death row inmates’ arms offers a less horrific way of killing somebody. While many claim that the drugs knock the patient unconscious before they feel any pain, there are studies that dispute this claim too. Now check out 50 insane facts about the CIA you never knew. Or watch this video instead.

What The Electric Chair Really Feels Like

Facts are fun, but most are presented in boring and badly edited videos. The Infographics Show focuses on making animated motion infographic videos, made in a fun and entertaining way. 

Software that we use: Adobe Audition for voice recording, Adobe Illustrator for dealing with vectors, and Adobe After Effects for animation. 

If you want to sponsor a video or discuss any other business-related things, you can get our email below.



The Infographics Show

잘못된 사형 집행의 공포: 윌리 프란시스의 이야기

1890년부터 2010년까지 미국 사형 집행의 약 3%는 치명적인 주사, 교수형, 전기의자 방문으로 인해 빠른 사망에 이르지 못하는 등 사형 집행이 실패로 끝났습니다.

살인죄로 유죄 판결을 받은 16세의 윌리 프랜시스는 가혹하고 불편한 모습으로 설계된 전기의자에서 잘못된 사형 집행을 경험했습니다.

사형 집행자의 실수와 술 취함은 윌리에게 고통스럽고 괴로운 경험으로 이어졌고, 윌리는 사형 집행을 중단해 달라고 간절히 호소했습니다.

윌리 프란시스의 처형에 대한 끔찍한 경험

잘못된 사형 집행의 피해자였던 윌리 프란시스는 전기의자에서 2,000볼트가 넘는 전류와 고통스러운 바늘로 찌르는 등 고통스럽고 충격적인 경험을 견뎌냈습니다.

사형 집행에 반대하는 변호사의 노력에도 불구하고 윌리는 자신의 운명을 받아들이고 소송을 취하하기로 결정했습니다.

1947년 5월 9일로 예정된 그의 두 번째 사형 집행은 간수들에 의해 잔인하게 옷을 벗기고 면도를 하는 것으로 진행되어 트라우마가 더욱 심해졌을 것입니다.

전기 의자는 전극 배치를 위해 특정 신체 부위를 면도해야 합니다.

일단 수감자가 앉으면 전류를 효과적으로 전달하기 위해 젖은 스펀지를 사용합니다.

그런 다음 사형 집행자가 스위치를 눌러 2,000볼트의 강력한 충격을 전달하여 즉각적으로 근육 제어력을 잃게 합니다.

전기의자의 처형 과정은 극심하기 때문에 피해자는 고통에서 벗어나기 위해 필사적으로 뼈를 탈구하고 부러뜨리기도 합니다.

첫 번째 전기 충격은 30초 동안 지속되며, 심장이 멈출 때까지 충격의 주기가 계속됩니다.

사형 집행이 잘못되면 피해자가 화염에 휩싸이고, 심한 멍이 들며, 초기 충격 후 생존 기간이 연장되는 등 끔찍한 결과를 초래하는 경우가 많습니다.

전기의자는 심각한 화상을 유발하고 종종 즉각적인 사망에 이르지 못하며, 피해자는 결국 주요 장기가 익어 사망에 이르게 됩니다.

미국의 많은 주에서 전기의자 사용을 중단했으며 앨라배마, 아칸소, 플로리다, 켄터키, 테네시 주에서만 여전히 사형 집행 수단으로 사용하고 있습니다.

치사 주사로의 전환은 수감자를 덜 끔찍하게 처형하는 방법을 제공하기 위한 것이지만, 사용되는 약물의 효과와 인간성에 대한 논란도 있습니다.