smoldering. In 1989, the state executed Horace Dunkins, who had an IQ of 69 and was convicted of murdering Lynn McCurry. In Dunkins's execution, the first jolt of electricity only knocked him unconscious. Charlie Jones, the warden at the time, said that because the jacks connecting the electricity to the chair had been reversed, there was not enough voltage to kill him on the first try. Therefore, it took 19 minutes for Dunkins to die. Today Yellow Mama is now stored in an attic above the execution chamber at the Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama. The last execution to occur using it was that of Lynda Lyon Block on May 10, 2002. On July 1 of that year, a revision to Alabama's death penalty went into effect allowing for an inmate to choose execution by either lethal injection or electrocution. Yellow Mama remains in storage in the event a future death row inmate elects to have the death sentence carried out by electrocution. See also Capital punishment in Alabama Gruesome Gertie, the nickname given to Louisiana's electric chair Old Smokey, the nickname given to New Jersey and Pennsylvania's electric chair Old Sparky, the nickname give to several states' electric chairs References Capital punishment in Alabama Electric chairs 1927 works