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They called it progress.

Thomas Edison called it science.

But when the Supreme Court gave its blessing, electricity became something else entirely — a state-sanctioned killer.

In this eerie Halloween edition of Law School in Plain English, Jeff pulls back the curtain on one of the most haunting legal moments in American history: when innovation met execution.

This is the story of how a courtroom turned the light of invention into the spark of death — and why the Justices believed it was humane.

We’ll unpack the real case behind the electric chair, the shocking public experiments that led up to it, and how law, morality, and fear collided in the name of “civilization.”

Because sometimes the law doesn’t just decide what’s legal — it decides what it means to be human.

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