Nebraska Supreme Court forbids use of electric chair

Feb 9, 2008, 1:22 GMT

Washington - The Nebraska Supreme Court ruled Friday that execution using the electric chair violated the Midwestern state's constitution as cruel and unusual punishment.

'We recognize the temptation to make the prisoner suffer, just as the prisoner made an innocent victim suffer. But it is the hallmark of a civilized society that we punish cruelty without practicing it,' the court's majority wrote in its 6-1 decision.

Nebraska was the only state of the 36 states that administer the death penalty that still used the electric chair as its sole means of execution. Nine other states also allow the method but only in special circumstances, such as a request by the condemned.

The penalty was challenged by lawyers for Raymond Mata Jr, who was sentenced to death for killing a three-year-old boy. He remains sentenced to death, but will have to be executed by another method, the court said.

More than 150 people have been executed by electrocution since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, with the most recent case last year in Tennessee.

The US Supreme Court last month heard arguments in a case that alleges lethal injection - the most widely used method of execution in the US - constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. It has not yet issued a decision in that case.