Aaron Mahnke

There was no doubt.

The man was still alive.

On went the chair again, and this time the capillaries in Kemmler's face began to burst.

An awful smell filled the room, singed hair and flesh.

One full excruciating minute passed as the chair continued to fizz and rattle, until at long last it was over.

Kemmler was dead.

The next day, a furious article scorched the front page of the New York Times.

Far worse than hanging, read the headline, a disgrace to civilization.

Later, an autopsy noted that Kemmler's muscles underneath where the electrodes were placed were, and I quote, "...cooked like overdone beef."

So much for a more humane punishment, right?

But did Kemmler's botched death spell the end of the electric chair?

Of course not.

In fact, not only did New York go right on using the thing, but soon other states hopped on the bandwagon as well.

And this was the world in which Philip Jackson was executed on a spring day in 1928.

Jackson, a black man, had been accused of raping and assaulting a white woman, right on the grounds of the U.S.

Capitol.

The woman, Daisy Welling, described her attacker as a light-skinned black man around 30 years old.

Which is vague, to say the least, but police were more than happy to round up any and all men fitting that profile, including Philip Jackson.

So, who was Jackson?

Well, he was indeed a light-skinned black man.