Virginia to Use 2 Shock Cycles in Executions

Virginia corrections officials said Friday that they plan to use two cycles of electrical shocks in future executions, after it took an extra jolt to put a convicted murderer to death.

The 83-year-old electric chair was moved to the Greensville Correctional Center in the southeastern town of Jarratt after the State Penitentiary in Richmond was closed last December. Prison officials installed new electrical equipment and changed the dose of electric current.

“It’s a different design,” said Edward C. Morris, deputy director of the Corrections Department. “The old chair used a much higher voltage. This system is less likely to cause some of the burning of the body that happened in the old high-voltage system.”

Before moving the chair to Greensville, prison officials used two 55-second jolts of 2,500-volts spaced five seconds apart.

Late Thursday, Derick Lynn Peterson was given a 1,725-volt shock for 10 seconds, followed by a 110-second, 240-volt surge intended to make the heart stop beating. But afterward, prison doctor David Barnes detected a pulse.

Prison officials administered the two-level cycle again and Barnes pronounced Peterson dead.

“Most likely we’ll use two cycles from now on,” Morris said.

“After the first cycle, the person is brain dead,” prison operations officer Jean Clarke added.

Greensville’s first execution went as planned. Albert J. Clozza was put to death on July 24 for the rape and beating death of a 13-year-old girl.

Peterson was sentenced to death for the murder of a Hampton supermarket manager during a robbery in February, 1982.

He was one of six Death Row inmates who escaped from the Mecklenburg Correctional Center in May, 1984. He is the fourth of the escapees to be put to death; two others remain on Death Row.

Peterson was the 13th person to be put to death in Virginia since the state resumed executions in 1982. A total of 152 people have been executed in the nation since a 1976 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allowed states to resume use of the death penalty.

In Missouri, Maurice Oscar Byrd, 36, was put to death by injection early Friday for murdering four cafeteria workers in a hold-up in 1980.