friday, october 29, 1999
Face of death
Web shows electrocuted killer
TALLAHASSEE,Fla. (AP) Hundreds of thousands - if not millions of people around the world have logged onto the Flordia Web site to look at grisly color photos of the last killer executed in the state's electric chair.
The photos depict the bloody body and contorted face of Allen Lee "Tiny" Davis, who was put to death in July. The pictures were posted by the high court because they figured in a case in which the justices upheld the use of the electric chair.
Some of those who have gone online, for a look - particularly Europeans were appalled. A Frenchman sent a one-word piece of e-mail: "Barbarians."
"'When, Europeans think of Florida, they think of Disney World, beaches and fiery electrocutions," said Michael Radelet, a sociologist at the University of Florida who has researched capital punishment and opposes it.
But many Americans seemed to approve of both the execution and the posting of the pictures.
"The photos on this website are WONDERFUL!" a woman from North Redington Beach, Fla., e-mailed the court.
Davis, who weighed about 350 pounds, was executed for the 1982 murders' of a pregnant woman and her two young daughters, He suffered a nosebleed just before the current was applied, and blood poured from behind the mask over his face, soaking his white shirt.
A judge ruled that the chair operated correctly, and the state Supreme I Court upheld that decision, 4-3. But Justice Leander Shaw wrote a, blistering charging that Davis "brutally tortured to death." He also attached the three photos.
Like all decisions by the state Supreme Court, the Sept. 24 opinion was posted on the court's Web site, at www.firn.edu/supct/deathwarrants
"It seemed to explode into an international news story, and it seems to re-explode every couple of weeks," court spokesman Craig Waters said yesterday.
The photos were also sent to "the U.S. Supreme Court, which on Tuesday agreed to consider the constitutionality of electrouctuion and suspended use of the electric chair. It is the first review of the electric chair by the nation's high court in more than a century.
The public can access the Web page through two servers. The smaller server has crashed several times and sometimes creeps along. The number of hits destroyed the program that counts visitors to the site.
"It probably is in the millions, but there simply is no way of knowing," Waters said.
Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, which opposes the death penalty, approved of the release of the pictures.
"Some people might find them disgusting," he said, "but that is what state-sponsored execution by electrocution is."
the webmaster would like to thank the judge in flordia who posted the photos. the death penalty is just another name for government sponsered murders. and in america its generally a racist thing. the government almost always executes blacks who murder white people. but very rarely executes white people who kill white people, or white people who kill blacks.