The public came to believe that the chair was more efficient than hanging and that it lessened the suffering of the executed. However, after a 17-jolt of electricity, Kemmler appeared dead but jerked suddenly. Immediately, the current was turned back on. Kemmler groaned and jerked once more and witnesses of the execution vomited and fainted. This repulsive performance of execution is what society calls a "quick and painless killing." Many people that opposed the death penalty saw this as a violation of the Eighth Amendment, which states that " cruel and unusual punishments [shall not be] inflicted. " .
Still, the electric chair eventually became the most popular method of execution in the United States, with 26 states using it by 1951. However, soon new methods were invented and many states began to replace the electric chair. By 1997, only 11 states use the chair. In New York, where the electric chair was invited, it was used to kill over 695 people before the states abolished the death penalty in 1965. New York later reinstated the death penalty law with death by lethal injection. .
In 1924, D.A. Tuner, a major in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, who thought that the gas chamber was less cruel than the electric chair, invented the gas chamber. By 1997, the gas chamber was used as an option on only seven states. The chamber is of octagonal shape and the condemned person is strapped into a chair, and a stethoscope is strapped to his chest and connected to ear pieces in a witness room so that the doctor can note when the heart stop beating. Under the convict's chair is a bowl, above the bowl cyanide, a very poisonous chemical substance, is suspended. An executioner releases sulfuric acid through a tube into the bowl and then drops the cyanide into the acid. The cyanide gas is released due to chemical reaction and the gas eventually kills the convict by paralyzing the heart and the lungs.
