Tennessee executes killer after 36 years

A Tennessee inmate became the second person to die in the electric chair in just over a month Thursday, nearly two decades after the state adopted lethal injection as its preferred method of execution.

David Earl Miller, 61, was pronounced dead at 7:25 p.m. Thursday at a Nashville maximum-security prison, corrections officials said.

Miller spent 36 years on death row, the longest of any inmate in Tennessee.

Both Miller and Edmund Zagorski before him chose the electric chair over lethal injection.

The inmates argued in court that Tennessee’s current midazolam-based method causes a prolonged and torturous death.

Their case was thrown out, largely because a judge said they failed to prove a more humane alternative was available. Zagorski was executed Nov. 1. Gov. Bill Haslam declined Thursday to intervene in Miller’s execution.

Moments before the execution, Miller was asked if he wanted to say anything, but his reply was not understandable. He was asked again and his attorney clarified that he was saying, “Beats being on death row.”

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.