American Notes JUSTICE

The electric chair is supposed to be a quick and humane way to put a criminal to death. But when the executioner at the Florida State Prison threw the switch on cop killer Jessie Tafero two weeks ago, it seemed anything but. To the horror of spectators, fire and smoke shot out from the headpiece strapped to Tafero's skull. He nodded and gurgled for four minutes as his eyebrows burned and ashes fell from his head to his shoulders. The 2,000-volt current had to be turned off twice to keep the whole metal-and-leather headgear from bursting into flame.

"Torture," said the condemned man's lawyer, Mark Olive. "Barbarous," said Thomas Horkan, executive director of the Florida Catholic Conference. Last week prison officials came up with an explanation. An overzealous maintenance man had replaced the natural sponge in the headpiece with a synthetic sponge bought at a local store. When tested in a toaster, the synthetic sponge started to smoke. Tafero, officials insisted, was brain-dead after the first shock of electricity and felt no pain.