Editing Electric chair (section)

====Gerry Commission====
After a series of botched hangings in the United States, there was mounting criticism of that form of [[capital punishment]] and the death penalty in general. In 1886, newly elected New York State governor [[David B. Hill]] set up a three-member death penalty commission, which was chaired by the human rights advocate and reformer [[Elbridge Thomas Gerry]] and included New York lawyer and politician [[Matthew Hale (New York politician)|Matthew Hale]] and Southwick, to investigate a more humane means of execution.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://www.anb.org/view/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.001.0001/anb-9780198606697-e-2001919|title=Southwick, Alfred Porter (1826–1898), mechanic, dentist, and proponent of the electric chair as a means of administering the death penalty|website=American National Biography|year=2009|doi=10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.2001919|isbn=978-0-19-860669-7|last1=Marc|first1=David}}</ref><ref>Richard Moran, Executioner's Current: Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and the Invention of the Electric Chair, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group – 2007, page 74</ref>

[[File:EXECUTION BY ELECTRICITY electric chair illustration Scientific American Volumes 58-59 June 30 1888.png|thumbnail|left|A June 30, 1888, ''[[Scientific American]]'' illustration of what the ''electric chair'' suggested by the Gerry Commission might look like.]]
The commission members surveyed the history of execution and sent out a [[Trier of fact|fact-finding]] questionnaire to government officials, lawyers, and medical experts all around the state asking for their opinion.<ref>Craig Brandon, The Electric Chair: An Unnatural American History, page 54</ref> A slight majority of respondents recommended hanging over electrocution, with a few instead recommending the abolition of capital punishment. The commission also contacted electrical experts, including [[Thomson-Houston Electric Company]]'s [[Elihu Thomson]] (who recommended high voltage AC connected to the head and the spine) and the inventor [[Thomas Edison]] (who also recommended AC, as well as using a [[Westinghouse Electric Corporation|Westinghouse]] generator).<ref name="autogenerated30">Anthony Galvin, Old Sparky: The Electric Chair and the History of the Death Penalty, Skyhorse Publishing – 2015, pages 30–45</ref><ref>Craig Brandon, The Electric Chair: An Unnatural American History, pages 57–58</ref><ref>Jill Jonnes, Empires Of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, And The Race To Electrify The World, Random House – 2004, page 420</ref> They also attended electrocutions of dogs by George Fell who had worked with Southwick in the early 1880s experiments. Fell was conducting further experiments, electrocuting anesthetized [[vivisected]] dogs trying to discern exactly how electricity killed a subject.<ref name="autogenerated4">Richard Moran, Executioner's Current: Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and the Invention of the Electric Chair, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group – 2007, page 4</ref><ref name="autogenerated30" />

In 1888, the Commission recommended electrocution using Southwick's electric chair idea with metal conductors attached to the condemned person's head and feet.<ref name="Brandon The Electric Chair page 12"/> They further recommended that executions be handled by the state instead of the individual counties with three electric chairs set up at [[Auburn Correctional Facility|Auburn]], [[Clinton Correctional Facility|Clinton]], and [[Sing Sing]] prisons. A bill following these recommendations passed the legislature and was signed by Governor Hill on June 4, 1888, set to go into effect on January 1, 1889.