MEDIA ADVISORY

David LaChance///Mount Holyoke College///413-538-2030

Available for comment on the Possible End of the Electric Chair:

Richard Moran, Professor of Sociology, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA

As Nebraska begins reconsideration November 7 of its use of the electric chair in executions---and of the continued use of the death penalty itself---Mount Holyoke College Professor of Sociology Richard Moran has a unique perspective on the chair and its history as this nation's longtime execution method of choice. Nebraska is the last state to retain the chair as its primary (in fact, its only) method of execution.

Winning praise from the LA Times, Publishers Weekly and other reviewers, Moran's new book The Executioner's Current: Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and the Invention of the Electric Chair (Knopf 2002) looks at the unexpected history of how the electric chair was developed, not primarily out of the desire for a method of execution more humane than hanging, but in an effort by Edison's electric company to discredit Westinghouse's in the late 1880s. In a superbly told tale of industrial and political skullduggery that brings to light a little-known chapter in modern American history, Moran makes clear how an industrial tug-of-war raised many profound and disturbing questions, not only about execution but about the technological nature of the search for a humane method of execution. According to Moran, a fundamental question remains with us today: Can any method of execution ever be considered humane?

Richard Moran is a criminologist whose opinion pieces have appeared frequently on the op-ed pages of the nation's major newspapers, and a commentator for NPR's Morning Edition. He is leading expert on the insanity defense, capital punishment, and the history of the electric chair. In 1981, he published Knowing Right from Wrong: The Insanity Defense of Daniel McNaughtan, the first detailed study of the 19th century case responsible for the modern insanity defense.