"Have a seat." We often hear these words, but sometimes there could be none more horrible. I was looking at the electric chair at the Prison Museum in Huntsville, Texas. Its nickname was "Old Sparky," on which 361 people sat and never stood up again. Old Sparky retired in 1964 when the U.S. Supreme Court placed a moratorium on the death penalty as a "cruel and unusual punishment," according to the federal constitution, but it was restored as a novelty in the Prison Museum, built in 1989. After the U.S. Supreme Court changed its mind and lifted the moratorium in...