Reasons Why inmates who are about to be executed in the electric chair required to wear rubber pants over their underwear, but not for firing squad or lethal injection

 Reasons Why inmates who are about to be executed in the electric chair required to wear rubber pants over their underwear, but not for firing squad or lethal injection

Indeed, it is true that those being executed by electric chair wear a diaper or rubber britches over their underwear, the reason is quite obvious.

One of the many effects that high voltage electrocution has on the Human body is that every muscle in it instantly violently contracts, and remains fully contracted until the electricity is shut off. When this occurs, the person, if awake and aware of the situation, has no control over their muscles, as the electricity overrides any control impulses sent to them. My guess is that even tho they cant control their muscles, they can fully feel the agonizing pain of this off-the-scale contraction.

Anyone who has pulled a single muscle in their back and experienced the often extremely painful resultant accompanying muscle spasms that occur during healing, would probably agree that multiplying the severity of those muscle spasms by several times over the entire body would pretty much be the absolute worst pain that they've ever experienced. One can only hope that the electrocuted person doesn't remain conscious long enough to experience that agony for very long. However, we will never know for sure.

Therefore, common sense would suggest that when the person being electricuted is hit with the thousands of volts of electricity, the powerful contraction of their muscles would instantly result in the evacuation of urine and feces and other bodily fluids out of every body orifice connected to such substances. I suspect it would be something akin to how the ingredients of a ketchup packet exits it at a high rate of flow when someone steps on it.

If you've ever spent much time in a nursing home, or in a hospital ward filled with very old or sick disabled people, you know that living peoples' feces smell dreadful. Dead peoples' feces smell even worse. One leak can explode its horrible smell out of that room and down every nearby hallway and corridor. It is definitely enough to ruin your lunch. If you arent accustomed to it, it can easily make you vomit as well.

Putting a diaper and/or rubber pants on the person to be executed likely plays a key role in helping to avoid making everyone in the room retch or vomit from the smell. It's still there, and it still stinks, but the diaper/rubber pants might keep the worst of it contained.

When someone dies in general, or is executed by other, less immediately brutal means, such as lethal injection, once they are dead and their muscles relax, their bladder and bowels often end up losing some of their contents as well, but because nothing caused intense muscle spasms, it isnt forcefully ejected at the same rate as it would be during an electricution. Instead, it would seep out over time, with much of it being absorbed by their regular clothing and bedsheets, if they were left clothed there on the bed long enough. Since it doesnt squirt out, there is no need to wear rubber pants as one may during an electricution. As long as you dont move the dead person, or disrupt the clothing or bed sheets, the smell tends to be muted a bit.

Back 25 yrs ago, I worked at an apartment complex. The property mgr asked me and a maintenance man to check on the wellbeing of a tenant who was at home, but not answering her door. Evidently, a family member was sitting in the lobby, worried about her sister. We went to the unit, got the door open, and found the woman in bed, dead from an apparent suicide. There were empty pill bottles and a half empty can of Coors light on the bedside table. Police were called etc etc.

In that city when a body was found, even one that is obviously dead, they have to first be checked by an emt for signs of life. Once they run a short strip and make a determination, they leave and the police begin their investigation. However, on this particular day, the emt running the strip was a moron. After determining that the woman was dead, he pulled sheets out from under the body and covered her face and upper body. Doing this immediately caused the room to be filled with the stench of dead person feces. I simply stood there next to the bed, rolling my eyes in amazement over his idiocy.

The detective who was assigned to process the death was EXTREMELY pissed off at that emt. Not only did he disrupt a potential crime scene, but he made the detective's life for the next 2 hrs a nightmare from the stench.

But back to the rubber pants…..It's all about the convenience of and in deference to the people who have to be around or deal with the dead body, rather than being done on the dead person's behalf. Nobody cares what he experiences, as long as he ends up deceased.