Know Your Value</s>A Tennessee inmate’s final words were “let’s rock” moments before he became the first man executed in the electric chair in that state since 2007.

Edmund Zagorski (63) was pronounced dead at 7.26pm local time on Thursday at a Nashville maximum-security prison, officials said.

Asked if he had any last words in the death chamber, the inmate said, “Let’s rock” shortly before the execution was carried out.

Reporters witnessing the scene said at a news briefing afterwards that he alternated between grimacing and smiling as he lay strapped down and that a sponge was placed on his head and then a shroud over his face.

The witnesses said the inmate’s fists then clenched when the electricity began flowing and his body appeared to rise, but he did not move once the execution procedure was over.

In opting for the electric chair over a lethal injection as Tennessee allowed him, Zagorski had argued it would be a quicker and less painful way to die.

He became only the second person to die in the electric chair in Tennessee since 1960. Nationwide, only 14 other people have been put to death in the electric chair since 2000, including a Virginia inmate in 2013.

The execution was carried out shortly after the US Supreme Court on Thursday evening denied the inmate’s request for a stay.

Zagorski’s lawyer had argued that it was unconstitutional to force him to choose between the electric chair and lethal injection.

The state came close to administering a chemical injection to the inmate three weeks ago, a plan halted by Tennessee’s governor when Zagorski exercised his right to request the electric chair.

The Supreme Court’s statement said Justice Sonia Sotomayor was the dissenting voice, noting Zagorski’s decision to opt for the electric chair.

“He did so not because he thought that it was a humane way to die, but because he thought that the three-drug cocktail that Tennessee had planned to use was even worse,” Ms Sotomayor said in the statement.

“Given what most people think of the electric chair, it’s hard to imagine a more striking testament — from a person with more at stake — to the legitimate fears raised by the lethal-injection drugs that Tennessee uses.”

Zagorski was convicted of the April 1983 killings of two men during a drug deal. Prosecutors said Zagorski shot John Dotson and Jimmy Porter and then slit their throats after robbing the two men after they came to him to buy marijuana.

In Tennessee, condemned inmates whose crimes occurred before 1999 can choose the electric chair — one of six states that allow such a choice.

The US Supreme Court has never ruled on whether use of the electric chair violates the 8th Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment, but it came close about 20 years ago after a series of botched electrocutions in Florida.

During two executions in the 1990s smoke and flames shot from the condemned inmates’ heads. In 1999, blood spilled from under an inmate’s mask.

Shortly afterward, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to the electric chair. But the case was dropped when Florida made lethal injection its primary execution method.

Republican Governor Bill Haslam declined to intervene in Zagorski’s case despite receiving pleas from former jurors who convicted the inmate, correctional officers and Zagorski’s priest.

A request for commutation of Zagorski’s sentence to life in prison argued that Zagorski had been an “exemplary” inmate who never had a disciplinary infraction.

At the time of Zagorski’s conviction, Tennessee juries were not given the option of considering life without parole. Every state now requires juries to weigh that option in death penalty cases.

Tennessee’s electric chair was inspected on October 10 and found to meet the criteria for an execution, state documents show.

The device was originally rebuilt in the late 1980s by a self-taught execution expert who had worried the device would malfunction. It has only been used to execute one person before: Daryl Holton, in 2007.

Before Holton, the last person to die in Tennessee’s electric chair was William Tines in 1960.

Zagorski has been on death row for 34 years, the second-longest in Tennessee.

Groups opposed to Tennessee’s execution plan organised evening vigils in cities including Nashville, Knoxville and Memphis. – PA</s>Edmund Zagorski was executed by electric chair Thursday in a Nashville, Tenn., prison after challenging the constitutionality of lethal injection drugs and then choosing instead to die by electrocution.

When asked whether he had any last words, Zagorski, 63, simply replied, "Let's rock."

Zagorksi was the first man executed in the electric chair in Tennessee since 2007. He had been convicted in April 1983 of murdering two men — robbing them and slitting their throats during a drug deal.

His execution came after a flurry of legal maneuvering in recent weeks to delay the action. The U.S. Supreme Court Thursday night rejected an appeal to halt the execution. Zagorski had asked the high court to consider whether it was unconstitutional to force him to choose between lethal injection and lethal injection.

He requested the electric chair in early October after the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled that the use of lethal injection drugs was permissible. His federal public defender, Kelley Henry, said that Zagorski chose the electric chair because Tennessee's three-drug lethal injection protocol "is certain torture" and death by electrocution would be quicker and less painful.

In a dissent, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor commented on Zagorski's decision to request the electric chair.

"He did so not because he thought that it was a humane way to die, but because he thought that the three-drug cocktail that Tennessee had planned to use was even worse," Sotomayor said in the statement quoted by the Associated Press. "Given what most people think of the electric chair, it's hard to imagine a more striking testament — from a person with more at stake — to the legitimate fears raised by the lethal-injection drugs that Tennessee uses."

The AP also reported that witnesses said, during the execution, "the inmate's fists ... clenched when the electricity was applied and his body appeared to rise. He did not move once the procedure was over."

Zagorski was the second inmate executed in the electric chair in Tennessee since 1960. He had been on death row for 34 years, the second-longest in Tennessee.

The execution renews the debate in that state over capital punishment as some experts say that more condemned inmates could also request the electric chair.

The longest current member of Tennessee's death row, 61-year-old David Earl Miller, is scheduled to be executed in December.</s>Edmund Zagorski — the Tennessee death row inmate who chose pickled pig knuckles and pig tails for his final meal — has been executed.

Zagorski, 63, died at 7:26 p.m. CT on Thursday, the Tennessean reported. He was executed by electric chair.

TENNESSEE DEATH ROW INMATE CHOOSES PICKLED PIG KNUCKLES, TAILS AS LAST MEAL BEFORE EXECUTION BY ELECTRIC CHAIR

The inmate — who reportedly said "let's rock" before he was pronounced dead — was the 134th person the state of Tennessee put to death in more than 100 years, and was the first inmate since 2007 to have died via electric chair.

In 1984, Zagorski was sentenced to death for killing two men during an April 1983 drug deal. Prosecutors said Zagorski shot John Dotson and Jimmy Porter and then slit their throats after robbing them when they went to him to buy marijuana.

His initial execution was scheduled for Oct. 11, but the courts halted it because Zagorski, according to his lawyer, wanted to avoid the "unspeakable" torture of a lethal injection death.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday night denied his appeal, which argued it was unconstitutional to force him to choose between the electric chair and lethal injection.

He reportedly chose not to order a last meal for his originally scheduled execution. At the time, other inmates at Riverbend Maximum Security Institute who are friendly with Zagorski reportedly collected money to get him pizza.

"Should he change his mind and want to have dinner, his meal will be the same as the one provided to the other inmates at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution," the Tennessee Department of Corrections said when Zagorski chose not to select a last meal.

Death row inmates are given $20 for a meal of their choice prior to their execution.

Nationwide, only 14 other people have been put to death in the electric chair since 2000, the most recent being in Virginia in 2013. In Tennessee, condemned inmates whose crimes occurred before 1999 can choose the electric chair — one of six states that allow such a choice.

Fox News' Katherine Lam and The Associated Press contributed to this report.</s>NASHVILLE – Death row inmate Edmund Zagorski died at 7:26 p.m. CDT Thursday after Tennessee prison officials electrocuted him with the electric chair. He was 63.

He is the 134th person put to death by Tennessee since 1916 and the second person this year after Billy Ray Irick’s execution by lethal injection on Aug. 9. He is the first person to die by electric chair since Daryl Horton's execution in 2007.

Zagorski was convicted in the April 1983 murders of John Dale Dotson, of Hickman County, and Jimmy Porter, of Dickson. Prosecutors argued Zagorski lured them into the woods in Robertson County with the promise to sell them marijuana, and then he shot them, slit their throats and stole their money.

Two minutes before it was set to begin at 7 p.m., the U.S. Supreme Court denied Zagorski's appeal on the grounds of the unconstitutionality of choosing between the electric chair and lethal injection.

More: Tennessee inmate's execution was torture, expert says

More: 'I'm no good': Convicted killer of gay man dies via lethal injection in Ohio

As dark clouds loomed over Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville and the sunset changed the sky from bright pink to black, a police-escorted van arrived.

Eight people believed to be family members of the victims entered the prison to witness the execution.

They waited in front of a covered large window that looked into the execution chamber where on the other side of the glass Zagorski sat pinned in the electric chair, held down by buckles and straps with electrodes fastened to his feet.

The blinds opened for the rest of the witnesses to see Zagorski dressed in his cotton clothes, smiling and grimacing to the group.

He sat smiling in the wired chair as prison staff placed a wet sponge, which had been soaked in salt, and a metal helmet on his freshly shaven head.

Zagorski raised his eyebrows, appearing to be communicating with his attorney Kelley Henry. She sat while nodding and tapping her heart, looking at Zagorski.

“I told him, when I put my hand over my heart, that was me holding him in my heart,” Henry told The Tennessean. She said Zagorski smiled, to encourage her to smile back.

Then his face was covered with a black shroud.

The warden gave the signal to proceed. Zagorski lifted his right hand several times in what looked like attempts to wave, before he clenched his hands into a fist as the first current ran 1,750 volts of electricity through his body for 20 seconds.

There was a short pause before the second jolt was administered for 15 seconds.

The doctor overseeing the death appeared in view to check on Zagorski’s vitals.

Zagorski was dead. The blinds into the chamber closed.

Ten minutes later, the victims' families exited the building and drove away in the van without speaking publicly.

"The death of Edmund Zagorski was carried out by means of electrocution on Nov. 1, 2018," Neysa Taylor, director of communications for the Tennessee Department of Correction, said in a press conference.

Zagorski was set to die three weeks ago.

His request to die by electric chair saved his life – at least for a few weeks, when Gov. Bill Haslam granted reprieve three hours before his scheduled execution on Oct. 11.

The move bought the state time to prep the chair during last-minute legal wrangling.

Zagorski requested death by electric chair with hope that death would come instantaneously – the “lesser of two evils” compared to lethal injection, argued federal public defender Kelley Henry.

According to a doctor who reviewed Irick’s execution, Irick felt searing pain akin to torture before his death. Experts argue that inmates experience the feeling of “drowning and burning alive at the same time” that reportedly comes with lethal injection.

Questions of if and how Zagorski’s death would play out continued to swirl up over the past month.

During his 1984 murder trial, the then-28-year-old Zagorski told his defense team he wanted the death penalty and forbid them to contact his family or dig into his past, according to documents from the Tennessee Supreme Court.

But once on death row, Zagorski changed this mind. Thirty-four years and 22 appeals later, he and his new defense team fought for a last-minute court decision to save his life, claiming his trial attorneys made errors in representing him

On Oct. 10, the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay. The state responded the next morning and asked the U.S. Supreme Court to deny a stay and allow the execution to move forward.

Zagorski had asked the federal court to to force the state to use the electric chair for his execution – the state initially refused and planned to move forward with lethal injection but District Judge Aleta Trauger ruled that afternoon that the state could not use lethal injection until Zagorski's claim had been heard.

Zagorski grew up poor in Tecumseh, Michigan, about an hour southwest of Detroit, according to an appeal filed to the Tennessee Supreme Court in 1998.

His father played little role in his life, and his mother, impaired by a brain injury, had wanted a daughter, according to the appeal.

He could not read or write between the ages of 8 and 10. He developed a stutter.

He had no eye glasses for a time, despite having poor vision.

At an early age, he was exposed to drugs and alcohol.

Zagorski had “minor skirmishes with the law as a juvenile and federal drug convictions as an adult,” the appeals documents show, but had no convictions for violent crime before the murders of John Dale Dotson and Jimmy Porter in April, 1983.

If the jurors had known this, Zagorski and his team argued, it would have kept him from the death penalty.

On April 23, Dotson was making plans with his friend Porter to meet a man he knew as Jesse Lee Hardin to buy 100 pounds of marijuana.

Posing as Hardin, Zagorski told Dotson he’d worked as a mercenary in South America and worked a stint drilling for oil near New Orleans.

Though not more than acquaintances, the men agreed to meet Zagorski and authorities later found their bodies in a secluded, wooded area near Interstate 65 in Robertson County.

When her husband didn’t return home after the meeting, Marsha Dotson said she knew immediately something had happened. Although search efforts began right away, the bodies of Porter and Dotson weren't found for about two weeks.

There was a national manhunt for Zagorski. He was eventually spotted in Ohio and was apprehended after a shootout with police.

The inmate’s statements about his time in South America could never be verified, according to Sumner County District Attorney Ray Whitley, who was an assistant district attorney in 1984 who tried the case and sought the death penalty.

“Whether he was or not, who knows,” the prosecutor said. “He was apparently a very convincing person to make friends and get these people to believe enough to go out into the woods with him.”

In the 1984 trial, life without parole not an option. It's a point Zargorski's attorney Robert Hutton pushed in the petition to commute his sentence.

The jury did not have the option to sentence him to life without parole because their only options in the 1984 trial were death or the life with the possibility of parole.

Six of the surviving jurors in the case agreed life without parole was an appropriate sentence for Zagorski, the clemency request stated. Today, a death sentence would not be given if just one juror wanted life without parole

And while Marsha Dotson for more than 30 years wanted nothing more than to see Zagorski put to death for his crimes, she has since "softened."

“I’ve come to realize that it’s not my place to condemn somebody, to let them die. I can’t play God," Dotson said.

Hutton also argued Zaroski has also shown "exemplary" behavior during his prison term as a "rehabilitated man." He never received a single disciplinary infraction and testimonies from officers and volunteers detail his trustworthy, hardworking, respectful and peacekeeping demeanor.

"His extraordinary rehabilitation demonstrates that if you commute Ed's sentence, he will continue to make the prison community a safer place for both officers and inmates," Hutton wrote in the petition.

The Roman Catholic bishops of the Nashville and Knoxville dioceses have also spoken out ahead of Zagorski's execution.

What's next for executions in Tennessee?

The debate of capital punishment has burned hot in Tennessee. Like many states, Tennessee’s death penalty law was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972.

Officials moved quickly to pass new laws governing the punishment in 1975. But legal challenges kept the death penalty on hold, and it wasn’t until 2000 that an execution was carried out.

Six men were put to death by lethal injection and one was executed by electric chair through 2009. A hiatus followed until Irick's execution on Aug. 9.

Irick and Zagorski were part of a group of 32 death row offenders suing the state over its lethal injection method. The Tennessee Supreme Court ruled in a 4-1 majority in October the drugs can continue in Tennessee even though medical experts said the state's controversial three-drug protocol tortures inmates to death.

The state in the past has also gone back and forth on whether the electric chair should be used again. It's unclear how Zagorski's request for the chair will impact executions in the state moving forward but expert on executions predicts more death row inmates could follow his lead.

Death row inmate David Earl Miller is set to be executed Dec. 6. Miller, 61, was convicted of killing a disabled woman with a fire poker in 1981. He is the longest current member of Tennessee's death row.</s>Tennessee has used its electric chair for the first time since 2007, executing an inmate for the killings of two other men during a 1980s drug deal.

Authorities say 63-year-old Edmund Zagorski was pronounced dead at 7.26pm local time on Thursday at a Nashville maximum-security prison.

In opting for the electric chair over a lethal injection as Tennessee allowed him, Zagorski had argued it would be a quicker and less painful way to die.

He became only the second person to die in the electric chair in Tennessee since 1960.

Nationwide, only 14 other people have been put to death in the electric chair since 2000, including a Virginia inmate in 2013.

Prosecutors say Zagorski shot John Dotson and Jimmy Porter and slit their throats in April 1983 after robbing them when they sought to buy marijuana from him.

On Thursday evening the US Supreme Court denied a request to halt the execution.

Zagorski had asked the court take up his claim that it's unconstitutional to force him to choose between the electric chair and lethal injection.</s>NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The Latest on planned execution of Tennessee death row inmate Edmund Zagorski (all times local):

Vigils have been organized across Tennessee to oppose the state's plans to put an inmate to death in the electric chair.

Edmund Zagorski is scheduled to be executed at chair 7 p.m. CDT Thursday at a maximum-security prison in Nashville.

Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty have planned vigils at the West End United Methodist Church in Nashville, the Market Square stage in Knoxville, and the Memphis Theological Seminary. All the vigils were set to begin at 6:30 p.m. local time.

Zagorski was sentenced to death in 1984 for killing two men during a drug deal. He requested the electric chair over lethal injection just days before he was to be executed three weeks ago, prompting the governor to step in to allow the state time to prepare for a change of execution method.

With just hours left before his scheduled execution, condemned Tennessee inmate Edmund Zagorski is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to put a stop to the plan.

On Thursday, Zagorski asked the court take up his claim that it's unconstitutional to force him to choose between the electric chair and lethal injection. Zagorski chose the chair because he thinks it will be quicker, but he maintains that both methods are unconstitutional.

Zagorski already had a petition pending in a different case. That one claims Zagorski had bad lawyers at trial, resulting in an unfair verdict.

Zagorski is scheduled to be executed at 7 p.m. in Nashville's Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. He was sentenced in 1984 for his convictions in the slayings of two men during a drug deal.

Tennessee is scheduled to execute a double-murderer in the electric chair Thursday evening.

If it goes ahead as scheduled, Edmund Zagorski would be only the second person put to death by electrocution in Tennessee since 1960. Daryl Holton chose to die in the electric chair in 2007.

The last person to be executed by electrocution in the U.S. was Robert Gleason, who was put to death in Virginia in 2013.

Zagorski chose the chair after his legal challenge to Tennessee's midazolam-based lethal injection protocol failed. His attorneys say he believes death by electrocution would be quicker and less painful, but he maintains that both methods are unconstitutional.

Zagorski was sentenced to die in 1984 for the slayings of two men during a drug deal.</s>On Thursday, 63-year-old Tennessee death row inmate Edmund Zagorski will be put to death in the electric chair. The inmate has been on death row for more than 30 years for the 1983 murders of John Dale Dotson and Jimmy Porter in a drug deal gone wrong. Zagorski’s lawyers had been engaged in a lengthy legal battle over whether the controversial sedative Midazolam, which has been blamed for several botched executions, should be used. Finally, Zagorski requested the chair, forcing Tennessee to decide if it would end his life with a method that a majority of Americans find cruel and unusual.

After an Oklahoma doctor came up with the idea of fatal doses of pharmaceuticals as way to execute inmates in 1982, states increasingly opted for lethal injection as the least painful method of executing prisoners. But after a series of botched executions, including Clayton Lockett who twitched, gasped, and spoke before dying of a heart attack in 2014, several lawsuits challenged the use of the drugs. Doctors described their effects as being comparable to torture, and drug manufacturers increasingly refused to sell their products to prisons. As a result, states have been left to find other methods, or return to those that had fallen out of use. “The legitimacy of capital punishment has depended on the belief that we could find technology that will make it safe, reliable, and humane,” says Austin Sarat, professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst Collage and the author of Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America’s Death Penalty.

Because other states were struggling to find a supply of lethal injection drugs, the Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Haslam signed a law in 2014 that would allow the state to use the electric chair if drugs weren’t available.

The electric chair has been in use since the 19th century, when it was created as a method of execution that was more humane than hanging. Alfred Southwick, a New York dentist, built the first electric chair in 1888. In 1890, William Kemmler, a man convicted of murdering his common-law wife was the first person to be executed in the chair in New York. States quickly adopted the approach, and throughout most of the 20th century it became the most prevalent method of execution in the United States.

When inmates are electrocuted to death, they are first shaved and then strapped to the chair. A metal skullcap electrode is attached to the scalp and another to the leg. The inmate is then given a jolt of between 500 and 2,000 volts for about 30 seconds. Prison staffers must wait for the body to cool down before checking to see if the inmate is still breathing. If he is, another jolt is given and the process is continued until the prisoner is dead.

When an electrocution is botched, the results can be gruesome. In 1983, it took 14 minutes for the state of Alabama to put John Evans to death. After the first jolt of electricity, flames erupted from the electrode in the inmates leg and smoke came out from the hood on Evans’ head. The doctors applied another jolt when they found he still had a heartbeat. Even though still more smoke poured out, and Evans’ lawyer asked them to stop, the doctors applied a third jolt of electricity. Thomas Arthur, an Alabama inmate who was executed by lethal injection last year, told Mother Jones that when the state used the electric chair, he could smell burning flesh within the confines on death row.

In 1990, Florida executed Jesse Tafero using electrocution for the murder of two law enforcement officials. During the procedure, Tafero’s head erupted into flames and prison staffers had to use three jolts of electricity to kill him. Later, parts of the case were overturned based on lack of evidence.

The US Supreme Court has never ruled the use of the electric chair as being unconstitutional. The high court initially planned to review its use in 1999, after a botched electrocution in Florida, but dropped the case after the state decided to switch to lethal injections. Many other states followed suit, eliminating electrocution in favor of lethal injections, under the assumption that it was more humane.

The last Tennessee inmate to be executed in the chair was Daryl Holton, who was put to death in 2007 for the murder of his four children; he too opted for the chair over lethal injection. His occurred the way the state had intended, but Fred Leuchter, who refurbished the chair the state will use in 1988, says they simply got lucky. He warns that the procedure could be botched. Leuchter’s career in the execution business was ruined when he claimed there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz. After his Holocaust-denying comments came to light, it was also discovered that he didn’t have an engineering license or degree, even though he claimed to be an engineer. Nonetheless, the chair he built is still being used today.

While Leuchter stands by his original creation, he says it has since been modified and those changes will lead to failure. “Tennessee’s got an electric chair that’s going to hurt someone or cause problems,” he told the Associated Press on Wednesday. “I don’t think it’s going to be humane.”</s>NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - The Latest on the scheduled execution of Tennessee inmate Edmund Zagorski (all times local):

Tennessee death row inmate Edmund Zagorski has selected his final meal before Thursday's scheduled execution.

The Tennessee Department of Correction announced Wednesday that Zagorski's last meal will be pickled pig knuckles and pig tails.

Death row inmates are allowed $20 for a special meal before they're executed. In August, death row inmate Billy Ray Irick chose a combo that included a super deluxe burger, onion rings and a Pepsi.

Zagorski was originally scheduled to be executed Oct. 11, but that got delayed due to legal challenges and a last minute reprieve.

FILE - This undated file photo released by the Tennessee Department of Corrections shows death row inmate Edmund Zagorski in Tennessee. If Tennessee electrocutes Zagorski, it will be in an electric chair built by a self-taught execution expert who is no longer welcome in the prison system. (Tennessee Department of Corrections via AP, File)

At that time, Zagorski chose to forgo having a final meal and instead eat what the rest of the inmates would eat for dinner.

Tennessee is scheduled to execute a double-murderer in the electric chair Thursday evening.

If it goes ahead as scheduled, Edmund Zagorski will be only the second person put to death by electrocution in Tennessee since 1960. Daryl Holton chose to die in the electric chair in 2007.

The last person to be executed by electrocution in the U.S. was Robert Gleason, who was put to death in Virginia in 2013.

Zagorski chose the chair after his legal challenge to Tennessee's midazolam-based lethal injection protocol failed. His attorneys say he believes death by electrocution will be quicker, but he maintains that both methods are unconstitutional.

Zagorski was sentenced to die in 1984 for the murder of two men in a drug deal.</s>Those were the last words Edmund Zagorski said before he was executed Thursday in an electric chair, the first U.S. inmate to be killed by the controversial method since 2013.

Convicted for the murder of two men in 1983, Zagorski requested death by electric chair to avoid the suffering inflicted by the three-drug cocktail Tennessee uses for lethal injection. His lawyer called the chair the “lesser of two evils.” The state allows inmates whose crimes occurred before 1999 to choose between the two methods of execution.

Zagorski made his choice just two months after Billy Ray Irick was executed by lethal injection in Tennessee. Medical examiners said Irick “experienced the feeling of choking, drowning in his own fluids, suffocating, being buried alive, and the burning sensation caused by the injection of the potassium chloride.”

Zagorski’s request to die via electrocution caused a delay in his execution. It had been 11 years since the chair was used in Tennessee and the state needed time to prepare.

During that delay, Zagorski’s legal team filed last-ditch appeals. And just minutes before was killed, the U.S. Supreme Court denied his request for a stay. His attorneys had argued that Zagorski’s constitutional rights were violated when he was forced to choose between the chair and lethal injection.

The Supreme Court said Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented. She expressed concern about Zagorski’s choice to die in the chair and what that said about his alternatives.

“He did so not because he thought that it was a humane way to die, but because he thought that the three-drug cocktail that Tennessee had planned to use was even worse,” Sotomayor said in the statement. “Given what most people think of the electric chair, it’s hard to imagine a more striking testament — from a person with more at stake — to the legitimate fears raised by the lethal-injection drugs that Tennessee uses.”

Both Zagorski and Irick were part of a lawsuit this year that argued Tennessee’s three-drug cocktail is so vicious it amounts to a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Doctors testified that the first drug in the cocktail, midazolam, does not numb patients and prevent them from feeling pain, as it is supposed to. The Tennessee Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that drugs could continue to be used.
The state of Tennessee executes Edmund Zagorski, a man convicted of the April 1983 murders of John Dotson and Jimmy Porter, making it the first time the state has executed an inmate by electrocution since 2007. Zagorski requested that he be executed via electrocution.