[1] His first application for this phenomenon was to help invent a way to euthanize stray dogs at the Buffalo SPCA, but within a year he was publishing his ideas on using this method for capital punishment in scientific journals.

After a series of botched hangings in the United States, there was mounting criticism of this form of capital punishment and the death penalty in general.

In 1886 newly elected New York State governor David B. Hill set up a three-member death penalty commission to find a more humane form of execution.

The committee included Southwick, human rights advocate and reformer Elbridge Thomas Gerry, and New York lawyer and politician Matthew Hale.

They explored many forms of execution and in 1888 recommended electrocution using Southwick's electric-chair idea with metal conductors attached to the condemned person's head and feet.