Judges' Web Page Overwhelmed by the
Curious
Oct. 6, 1999
By David Noack
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Justice Leander
J. Shaw Jr.
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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (APBnews.com) -- The posting of a trio of gory
death chamber photographs to the Florida Supreme Court Web site is
attracting so much attention that the system has crashed.
"We are getting hammered," said court spokesman Craig Waters
today.
While the site could not be accessed earlier today, it was back
up in the afternoon.
Waters said the court's main computer server has been crashing
under the weight of users wanting to access the photographs of
convicted killer Allen Lee "Tiny" Davis, who was put to death in
July.
Justice Leander J. Shaw Jr. placed the photographs appearing on
the court's Web site. Shaw dissented in a recent court ruling
approving the use of the electric chair in capital punishment cases.
Hemorrhaged blood onto shirt
The pictures show Davis strapped to the electric chair and
hemorrhaging blood from his nose onto his chest and white prison
shirt. The point of the pictures was to highlight the brutality of
using the electric chair.
Waters said this is only the second time that the court Web site
had crashed. The first time was in 1996 when the site was the target
of computer hackers.
He said the site has gotten so many hits that the log file, which
records how many visitors have come to the site, has been corrupted.
"The software that we have to decipher log files cannot read
files that big, which is over 100 megabytes of data," said Waters,
who added they might upgrade the server.
Newsgroups buzz about pictures
He said the majority of e-mail he's been getting is from users
asking where the photographs are located and why they can't access
the site.
In addition to the Web site attracting attention, so-called
Usenet newsgroups or discussion groups, such as alt.prison,
alt.true-crime, alt.obituaries, and alt.activism.death-penalty,
among others, are generating postings about the death penalty and
whether the photos are the real thing or a hoax.
