South Dakota's Electric Chair

1947

1 (?) Execution

Museum of the South Dakota State Historical Society, Pierre SD

South Dakota Chair

South Dakota has executed only one man by electrocution. George Sitts was the last man executed in South Dakota. He was electrocuted on April 8, 1947. The crimes, murdering a state criminal agent and the Butte County Sheriff, were committed in Lawrence County. He was the only one to die in the electric chair. But did he die in this chair? As the story goes, when the prison ran tests on the electric chair prior to the execution, something went wrong and the tests failed. South Dakota is said to have borrowed the electric chair from neighboring Nebraska and executed Sitts as scheduled. 

There is nothing deadly about an electric chair. It is the voltage from the generator that kills the convict. The purpose of the chair is to restrain the executee while the generator produces the fatal current. There would be no need to borrow the actual Nebraska chair, only the generator and possibly the skull cap and leg electrode. The South Dakota chair is a very intricately designed and constructed restraint device. I would think that the prison officials would have wanted to see their chair in action. After all, a lot of time and effort went into building this very adjustable chair. While under construction the builders would have conducted numerous tests, with volunteers, to assure that the clamps and adjustments worked the way they were designed to work. In "one of a kind" construction like this it would be a case of "trial and error" until they got it right. The State paid for the chair either through an outside contractor or by materials and tools with prison labor. I think it would be against human nature not to use the South Dakota Chair for the execution of George Sitts considering it would have nothing to do with the instrument of death, the generator. (This is my opinion. If you have any information to either confirm or deny my theory, please e-mail me.)

Borrowed Nebraska Chair?