A TENNESSEE INMATE is scheduled to become the second person to die in the state’s electric chair in as many months this evening, nearly two decades after the state adopted lethal injection as its preferred method of execution.
Both David Earl Miller (61) and Edmund Zagorski before him chose the electric chair over lethal injection, a process proponents said would be painless and humane.
But the inmates argued in court that Tennessee’s current midazolam-based method causes a prolonged and torturous death. They pointed to the August execution of Billy Ray Irick, which took around 20 minutes and during which he coughed and huffed before turning a dark purple.
Their case was thrown out, largely because a judge said they failed to prove a more humane alternative was available. Zagorski was executed on 1 November. Governor Bill Haslam declined today to intervene in Miller’s planned execution.
In recent decades, states have moved away from the electric chair, and no state now uses electrocution as its main execution method, said Robert Dunham. Dunham is the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, which doesn’t take a stand on the death penalty but is critical of its application.
Georgia and Nebraska courts both have ruled the electric chair unconstitutional, and about two decades ago it looked as though the US Supreme Court would weigh in on the issue. It agreed to hear a case out of Florida after a series of botched executions there. But Florida adopted lethal injection, and the case was dropped.
Dunham said he wasn’t aware of any state other than Tennessee where inmates were choosing electrocution over lethal injection.
In Tennessee, inmates whose crimes were committed before 1999 can choose electrocution over lethal injection. Zagorski’s execution was delayed about three weeks after he requested the electric chair amid a last-minute flurry of legal manoeuvres. The state initially refused his request until a federal court judge ordered the state to comply.
Haslam ordered a brief reprieve to “give all involved the time necessary to carry out the sentence in an orderly and careful manner”.
The builder of Tennessee’s electric chair warned that it could malfunction, but Zagorski’s execution appeared to be carried out without incident. It was only the second time Tennessee had put an inmate to death in the electric chair since 1960.
The courts have said Miller can’t challenge the constitutionality of the electric chair because he chose it, even though his attorneys have argued the choice was coerced by the threat of something even worse.
Miller was convicted of killing 23-year-old Lee Standifer in 1981 in Knoxville. Standifer was a mentally handicapped woman who had been on a date with Miller the night she was repeatedly beaten, stabbed and dragged into some woods.
Miller has spent 36 years on Tennessee’s death row, the longest of any inmate.
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Wow locked away for 36 years at the age of 25, and then executed. If it was Ireland, he’d have been out in the mid 90s
@Fergus O’Connor: they’d never give him 70 years here !!!!!!!
Could we not have a referendum in this Country on bringing back the death sentence? Premeditated senseless murder should carry the death sentence in any Country… You take an innocent life, especially a child. Well then you should expect to die in return..
@David Garland:Hmm don’t know about that, your giving the killer an easy way out too soon, stick him in a cell for 25 years and then sentence him to death, at least he can suffer with it for that period of time
@David Garland: No. One of the rules of the EU is to bin barbaric punishments like the death penalty. Only rogue states use it now. It seems to be worn as some sort of badge if honour in the US.
@David Garland: what we need is proper sentences that are mandatory and not suspended. The judicial system in this country is a disgrace. What deterrent is jail if you’ll get half your sentence suspended and then get out early anyway
@Kevin O’Donnell: 31 states use it.. so in fact it may be more accurate to say some rogue states don’t use it.
@Paul: Interesting idea. 25 seems a tad long maybe?
@David Garland: So, on the one hand you condemn the taking of a life but on the other hand you condone it? We need a proper justice system not a revenge system. While some of the sentencing here in Ireland is ridiculously lenient and needs a proper overhaul, I would still much, much rather our system than the US’s.
@Mia Ryan: You’d much rather a system that favours the rich and people from respectable families than the system they have in the US. In the US if you don’t get the death penalty you get 80 years without parole. In Ireland Life is somewhere between 12 and 20 years. Plus if you come from money and you rape a Girl you have the option of paying them compensation instead of a jail sentence.. That’s what you consider a better justice system is it
@David Garland: one its an easy way out.
Two, what’s your solution when you inevitability murder an innocent person for a crime they didn’t commit? Should the jury be done for murder?
Plenty of innocent people have been on death row.
@David Garland: we had a referendum in 2001 and removed it completely, even for the killing of a Garda
@David Garland: if a country is in the eu it is not illegal it’s not ethical
@David Garland: Are you kidding? Look at the penal system in the US. Minorities and poor people make up 98% of the prison population. Money screams loudly in the US. Before you idolize a system, spend some time working with people who have been victimised by it, who are be beaten down by the system, who spend months in prison for having candy floss because it takes that long for drug testing to be done if you can’t afford an attorney, who are terrified of cops…the very people who are supposed to protect them, who are at the mercy of a system where prisons are profit making private enterprises so there is absolutely no incentive for them to help rehabilitate prisoners. It is a horrible, inhumane and unfair system.
I don’t want even serial killers to suffer or be punished. I want them to stop killing people. If that means putting them down humanely, so be it. If it means rehabilitating them, fine.
@David Garland: no justice system is infallible enough to have an outcome that can not be changed once arrived at. Murder is the most serious of crimes and i don’t think any state should consider itself above that moral philosophy.
@Mia Ryan: depending on whether you are the victim or the perpetrator? Does the victim have any voice in the matter? Easy to be so virtuous in the face of others uncalled for suffering.
@Mia Ryan: what load of tosh. People like you are the exact reason the judicial system is in such a state. Dreaming snowflakes.
Ten dollars of electricity versus over 50k of drugs.
Fair play to him saving the U.S. tax payers a fortune.
@BAINNE ATHA CLIATH: The look on his face when the voltage hits his cranium? Priceless.
Good choice.
Good riddance.
Old sparky is making a comeback
Even the US admit between 5 to 10 percent of all those executed in the last 50 years were innocent. No civilised person can suggest this is right unless they volunteer to go through it themselves to prove their commitment.
@Cal Mooney: 4%
@Cal Mooney: and even that’s a guess. Those figures are also historically viewed and with increased scientific and DNA evidence is diminishing some estimates now have wrongful conviction at sub 1%. There are 31 states with the death penalty some of these have denied access to DNA testing where convict ahs pled guilty which skew the data. In short as we go forward the error rate will be minimal. I personally believe if its to be used then it should only be in cases with irrefutable DNA evidence.
@Emmet Doyle: Would you personally volunteer to be executed as a demonstration of your will to accept they do and will mistakes.
@Emmet Doyle: Doesn’t matter how low the figures are, even one mistake makes the whole system fall. And there have been many mistakes.
Bring back firing squads.
Why amn’t I shocked?
@Paraic: That’s sick, but I laughed.
Absolute nutcases American’s, but credit where credit is due, they deal with the dirt very well. 36 years and fry him up. Adios you sicko.
@Mike Lyn: and you think your not a sicko for cheering another humans death by lethal torture.
@LD: Quite a few on here. Between the psychopathic, vengeful type wanting the most painful death possible to the even worse seriously dysfunctional wanting to keep the convicted alive to maximise their pain in jail, there are some serious sickos on the Journal.
@Bat Daly: and you are one of the sickest
The electric chair was invented by a dentist.
36 years of simmer and finally he will be cooked
The guillotine was prob the most efficient way to carry out the death penalty, quick and easy but not very humane.
@Aidan: Amazing that this is not a choice.
@Dave time: It would be first choice for anyone on death row I would think. It was the French way of the death penalty but was abolished only back in 60s or 70s when capital punishment was abolished in France if my History from school stands correct
Excellent choice. Those injections would leave your wrists itchy for days afterwards.
Anyone care?
Shocking!
Two wrongs don’t make a right..
You could have a reaction to the drugs
And the Americans give out about the Taliban and their breach of human rights etc. 36 years and then executed. Poor man. He would have only done 8 years here.
have your say