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. 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. 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. 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. Nationwide, only 14 other people have been put to death in the electric chair since 2000, the most recent being in Virginia in 2013. 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. 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. “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. 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. 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. 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.
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.