Saying it's time to stop letting convicted killers "get off that easy," a Florida state lawmaker wants to use firing squads or the electric chair for those on death row. 
 
 Rep. Brad Drake filed a bill this week that would end the use of lethal injection in Florida executions. Instead, those with a death sentence would choose between electrocution or a firing squad. 
 
 Drake, a Republican, said the idea came to him after having a conversation with a constituent at a Waffle House over the legal battles associated with the Sept. 28 execution of Manuel Valle. 
 
 Valle's lawyers tried to stop the execution by arguing that a new lethal drug cocktail would cause him pain and therefore constitute cruel and unusual punishment. Courts, however, rejected that argument and let the execution go forward. 
 
 But Drake said the person at the restaurant questioned why death row inmates should even be allowed to die by lethal injection. Drake said he agreed and decided to sponsor the bill that would mandate a switch. The GOP-controlled Florida Legislature will consider the bill during the 2012 session that starts in January. 
 
 He said government is spending too much time listening to advocacy groups and instead should put in place a death sentence that forces convicted murderers to contemplate their fates. 
 
 Lethal injection just allows a person to die in their sleep while a firing squad or electrocution would force death row inmates to think about their punishment "every morning," Drake said. 
 
 "I think if you ask a hundred people, not even talking to criminals, how would you like to die, if you were drowned, if you were shot, and if you say you were put to sleep, 90 percent of some of the people would say I want to be put to sleep," Drake said. "Let's put our pants back on the right way." 
 
 Florida first began using the electric chair in 1924. Before then, most executions were carried out by hanging. 
 
 But the state switched to lethal injection in 2000. Then-Gov. Jeb Bush and the Republican-controlled Legislature pushed through the change after several botched electrocutions raised concerns that the state's death penalty would be declared unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court had agreed at the time to hear a challenge to the use of the electric chair. 
 
 Since the state made the switch, a total of 26 people have died by lethal injection, including Valle and serial killers Danny Rolling and Aileen Wuornos. 
 
 Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, said Drake's legislation would just cause embarrassment for Florida if it were adopted. 
 
 "Just when you thought that public policy in Florida couldn't get worse, along comes a state rep who develops proposed legislation from what he overhears at the Waffle House," Simon said. "Given all that former members of the Florida Supreme Court and the American Bar Association have said about Florida's broken death penalty system, including the nation's highest number of exonerations, this would be embarrassing _ if our legislature were capable of embarrassment." 
 
 But Drake said that those who caused suffering and grief for families should get their day of reckoning. 
 
 "I just don't think they should be able to get off that easy," he said. ||||| Republican Gov. Bill Haslam on Thursday signed a bill into law allowing the state to electrocute death row inmates in the event the state is unable to obtain drugs used for lethal injections. 
 
 Tennessee lawmakers overwhelmingly passed the electric chair legislation in April, with the Senate voting 23-3 and the House 68-13 in favor of the bill. 
 
 Richard Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said Tennessee is the first state to enact a law to reintroduce the electric chair without giving prisoners an option. 
 
 "There are states that allow inmates to choose, but it is a very different matter for a state to impose a method like electrocution," he said. "No other state has gone so far." 
 
 Dieter said he expects legal challenges to arise if the state decides to go through with an electrocution, both in terms of whether the state could prove that lethal injection drugs were not obtainable and on the grounds of constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment. 
 
 A Haslam spokesman confirmed to The Associated Press that the governor had signed the measure Thursday evening , but offered no further comment. 
 
 States have found themselves running out of drugs used to execute prisoners after a European-led boycott drug sales to prisons. 
 
 Republican state Sen. Ken Yager, a main sponsor of the electric chair measure, said in a recent interview that he introduced the bill because of "a real concern that we could find ourselves in a position that if the chemicals were unavailable to us that we would not be able to carry out the sentence." 
 
 A Vanderbilt University poll released this week found that 56 percent of registered voters in Tennessee support the use of the electric chair, while 37 percent are against it. 
 
 Previous Tennessee law gave inmates who committed crimes before 1999 the choice of whether they wanted to die by electric chair or lethal injection. The last inmate to be electrocuted was Daryl Holton, a Gulf War veteran who killed his three sons and a stepdaughter with a high-powered rifle in Shelbyville garage in 1997. He requested the electric chair in 2007. 
 
 A provision to apply the change to prisoners already sentenced to death has also raised a debate among legal experts. 
 
 Nashville criminal defense attorney David Raybin, who helped draft Tennessee's death penalty law nearly 40 years ago, has said lawmakers may change the method of execution but they cannot make that change retroactive. To do so would be unconstitutional, he said. 
 
 Supporters of the bill requested a legal opinion from state Attorney General Bob Cooper, who said the law would pass constitutional muster, but there was no guarantee it would not be challenged in court. 
 
 Thirty-two states have the death penalty, and all of them rely at least in part on lethal injection. Fewer than a dozen regularly carry out executions, among them Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Virginia and Texas, which leads the country. The federal government also uses lethal injection but rarely carries out executions. 
 
 The Supreme Court has never declared a method of execution unconstitutional on the grounds that it is cruel and unusual. It upheld the firing squad in 1879, the electric chair in 1890 and lethal injection in 2008. 
 
 The court made it clear over the years that the Eighth Amendment prohibits inflicting pain merely to torture or punish an inmate, drawing a distinction between a method like electrocution and old European practices such as drawing and quartering. The Constitution prohibits "unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain," the court said in 1976. ||||| NASHVILLE, Tenn Tennessee's electric chair would be pressed back into service for executions if the state cannot obtain drugs needed to carry out lethal injections under a bill advanced Wednesday by state lawmakers. 
 
 The Tennessee Senate voted 23-3 to advance the proposal that would bring back electrocution as the method of execution if lethal injection is deemed unconstitutional or the drugs cannot be obtained. Tennessee last used the electric chair in 2007. 
 
 The proposal follows Tennessee's decision in September to adopt the sedative pentobarbital as a single-drug method of execution. States have found it increasingly hard to obtain drugs for executions because many pharmaceutical firms, mainly in Europe, object to their use in capital punishment. 
 
 The bill's sponsor, Senator Ken Yager, said it "closes a loophole in current law." A companion bill is moving through the state House of Representatives. 
 
 Richard Dieter, executive director for the Death Penalty Information Center, which tracks executions, said such a law likely would be challenged as violating the U.S. Constitution's protections against cruel and unusual punishment. 
 
 By today's standards, electrocution could be considered a "painful and torturous" method of execution compared to lethal injection, Dieter said. 
 
 Lethal injection is the primary execution method in all states that have capital punishment, but some states allow for electrocution, hanging, firing squad or the gas chamber as alternate methods. 
 
 Tennessee would be the first state to revert to electrocution by legal mandate rather than an option chosen by an inmate, Dieter said. 
 
 Lawmakers in Missouri and Wyoming proposed adding firing squad as an execution method earlier this year. 
 
 The Tennessee Department of Correction does not have chemicals on hand to carry out executions, but is confident it will be able to secure them when needed, spokeswoman Dorinda Carter said. 
 
 "The electric chair is fully operational," she said when asked about the measure the legislature is considering. 
 
 (Reporting by Tim Ghianni; Editing by David Bailey and Eric Walsh)
– Lethal injection is just such a pleasant way to die. At least according to Florida state Rep. Brad Drake, who wants to put an end to the execution method in the state. He argues that Death Row killers shouldn't be allowed to "get off that easy"; the electric chair would be more appropriate he says—as would a firing squad. Drake this week filed a bill that would put an end to lethal injection and give convicts facing death the choice of the latter two, reports the AP. "I think if you ask a hundred people, not even talking to criminals, how would you like to die, if you were drowned, if you were shot, and if you say you were put to sleep, 90% of some of the people would say I want to be put to sleep," says the Republican, who apparently equates lethal injection with taking a permanent nap. "Let's put our pants back on the right way," Drake urges, adding that his proposed switch would force death row inmates to think about their punishment "every morning." And they'd be getting off easy, because, as reported by the Florida Current, if it were up to Drake, "we would just throw them off the Sunshine Skyway bridge and be done with it." Mediaite notes that Keith Olbermann is not a fan of the idea. (Click for another odd political push in Florida.)