Deborah Denno quoted in the Richmond Times-Dispatch about a Virginia House of Delegates bill that made available the electric chair if drugs for the lethal injections are unavailable — manufacturers have stopped producing the products used to put people to death by lethal injection and Virginia’s supply ran out on Nov. 30.
One was a 1994 study by Deborah Denno, a law professor at Fordham University, which said that 26 states have used electrocution dating to the 19th century.
Surovell also sent us a December 2012 article in Virginia Lawyer that cited Denno’s number of 26 states once allowing electrocutions, but added that all but four “have now moved away from it — either by legislative abandonment or judicial ruling.” That translates to an 85 percent drop in states.
The four states that still allow electrocutions, the article said, are Virginia, Alabama, South Carolina and Florida. Two more — Kentucky and Tennessee — permit prisoners convicted only before 1998 and 1999, respectively, to select electrocution
Read the entire Richmond Times-Dispatch article.