Court Bars Electric Chair Challenge

Florida can keep the electric chair as its sole means of imposing the death penalty because the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal Tuesday that attacked electrocution as a cruel and outmoded way to carry out capital punishment.

The court, in a brief order, turned away a convicted killer’s arguments that death in the electric chair offends “evolving standards of decency.”

Of the 38 states with death penalty laws, only four require execution by electrocution: Florida, Alabama, Georgia and Nebraska. Two others, Tennessee and Kentucky, recently have provided for lethal injection as an alternative.

Florida officials imposed a one-year moratorium on executions after a fire started during Pedro Medina’s March 25, 1997, electrocution. Flames and smoke rose from a mask covering his head after the electric current was turned on in the 74-year-old electric chair. Executions have resumed.

An autopsy report said Medina died instantly and had not suffered any pain from the fire, blamed on conducting sponges in the chair’s headpiece.

The Florida Supreme Court voted, 4-3, during the yearlong moratorium that continued use of the electric chair would not violate the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. That decision cited special rules state prison officials had adopted in the wake of Medina’s execution.

The state Legislature voted last year to keep electrocution as the state’s only means of execution.

In various states across the nation, in addition to electrocution and lethal injection, executions are carried out by hanging, firing squad and the gas chamber.

In the appeal acted on Tuesday, lawyers for death row inmate Eduardo Lopez had contended that Florida “continues to botch executions, fails to follow the protocol established after Mr. Medina was burned alive in the electric chair and mutilates the bodies of condemned inmates in the electric chair.”

But state prosecutors urged the justices to reject Lopez’s appeal.

“Nothing in this court’s precedents suggests that a method of execution that does not involve the infliction of wanton or unnecessary pain . . . can, or should, be rendered unconstitutional simply based upon the number of jurisdictions that do or do not allow it,” they said.

Lopez was sentenced to death for the 1983 murder of a young child during a Dade County house robbery.

In another case, the Supreme Court refused to revive ticket buyers’ lawsuit seeking to force Ticketmaster to pay triple damages for alleged overcharges.

Pop concert-goers accused the company of using its dominance in the ticket-sales business to boost service charges.

The lawsuit accused Ticketmaster of monopolizing the ticket-sales business for large popular music concerts and of using its advantage to charge sales and handling fees as high as $20 per ticket.

Ticketmaster has exclusive contracts with nearly every major concert promoter and with concert venues representing 63% of the nation’s concert hall seats, the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit accused Ticketmaster of engaging in price-fixing with those promoters and concert venues, and of boycotting the rock band Pearl Jam, which had a running feud with Ticketmaster over its service charges.

A federal judge in St. Louis had dismissed the claim, saying the ticket buyers lacked legal standing to sue.

The U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, although it said the ticket buyers still could seek a court order to bar any future violations of law.

Under Supreme Court precedent, damages for price fixing can be sought only by someone who directly bought something from a seller.

Indirect purchasers do not have standing to sue.

The appeals court said concert venues are the direct purchasers of Ticketmaster’s services.