Tennessee set to use electric chair for first time since 2007

NASHVILLE A man sentenced to die for a 1980s double murder was scheduled Thursday evening to become Tennessee’s first inmate since 2007 to be put to death in the electric chair and the first nationwide in a half decade using that method.

With hours left until his planned 7 p.m. CDT execution, Edmund Zagorski awaited a response from the U.S. Supreme Court on his request for a stay, his attorneys arguing 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 63-year-old inmate three weeks ago, a plan halted by Tennessee’s governor when Zagorski exercised his right to request the electric chair.

Zagorski was convicted of the April 1983 slayings 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.

He was set to be put to death at a maximum-security prison in Nashville.

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.

Zagorski’s attorneys argued the inmate believed death by electrocution in the chair would be a quicker and less painful way to die than by an injection, though they contend both methods are unconstitutional.

There was no immediate response from the nation’s high court on the request for a stay.

The U.S. 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 Gov. Bill Haslam has 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.

Separately Thursday, Zagorski had a petition pending before a lower court claiming bad attorney counsel at trial resulted in an unfair verdict.