Summary of Offense: Sentenced to death for a murder committed during a 1974 burglary.
Victim: Roy Asbell
Time of Death: 12:36 a.m.
Manner of execution: Electric Chair
Last Meal: N/A
Final Statement: Declined to make statement
Summary of Offense: Sentenced to death for a murder committed during a 1974 burglary.
Victim: Roy Asbell
Time of Death: 12:36 a.m.
Manner of execution: Electric Chair
Last Meal: N/A
Final Statement: Declined to make statement
December 13, 1984
MURDERER ELECTROCUTED IN GEORGIA AFTER APPEALS FAIL
JACKSON, Ga., Dec. 12 (AP) — The first charge of electricity administered today to Alpha Otis Stephens in Georgia's electric chair failed to kill him, and he struggled to breathe for eight minutes before a second charge carried out his death sentence for murdering a man who interrupted a burglary.
Mr. Stephens, 39 years old, was still alive more than six minutes after the prescribed two-minute, 2,080-volt charge was administered at 12:18 A.M. Warden Ralph Kemp ordered the procedure repeated after Mr. Stephens was examined by physicians. He was pronounced dead at 12:36 A.M.
Prison officials disclosed later that Mr. Stephens apparently tried to take his own life a few hours before the execution.
The attempt was made between the time Mr. Stephens was shaved for attachment of wires to the electric chair, about 10:15 P.M. Tuesday, and the time he was taken into the death chamber, around midnight. Wrist Cut With Razor
''He evidently had a small disposable razor,'' Fred Steeple, a spokesman for the prisons, said. ''We don't know how or where he got it. And he made a small incision below his thumb on the left wrist.''
''He evidently changed his mind because we found a wet towel he used to stop the bleeding,'' Mr. Steeple added. He said prison officials ''view it as a suicide attempt.''
Mr. Stephens was the third person to be executed in Georgia in 12 months, the 20th in the country this year and the 31st since the United States Supreme Court restored capital punishment in 1976.
A prison spokesman, John Siler, said that ''apparently there is no malfunction'' in the electric chair, which was built for Georgia's first execution in 19 years last December. But he said prison officials intended to find out why it took two charges to kill Mr. Stephens. Five Final Appeals
Mr. Stephens's 10-year legal struggle to avoid execution ended with the failure of five separate appeals for mercy, two to the Supreme Court, in the 24 hours before his death.
He was sentenced for the 1974 murder of Roy Asbell, who was taken to a remote field and shot twice in the head after interrupting a burglary at his son's home.
Mr. Stephens appeared nervous as he walked into the execution chamber surrounded by six guards at the nearby Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Center and was strapped to the varnished oak electric chair.
He declined an offer to see a chaplain and made no last statement. A few seconds after a mask was placed over his head, the first charge was applied, causing his body to snap forward and his fists to clench.
His body slumped when the current stopped two minutes later, but shortly afterward witnesses saw him struggle to breathe. In the six minutes allowed for the body to cool before doctors could examine it, Mr. Stephens took about 23 breaths.
At 12:26 A.M., two doctors examined him and said he was alive. A second two-minute charge was administered at 12:28 A.M.
Outside the prison 28 people demonstrated against the execution.
http://www.nytimes.com/1984/12/13/us...eals-fail.html
The State of Georgia has released an audio play by play narration of this execution. Audio is of multiple people within the execution chamber.
"There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche
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