Convict’s last words in electric chair: ‘Let’s rock’
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A Tennessee inmate’s final words were “let’s rock” moments before he became the first man executed in the electric chair in the state since 2007. He was put to death for the killings of two men during a drug deal that turned into a robbery decades ago.
Edmund Zagorski, 63, was pronounced dead at 7:26 p.m. Thursday at a Nashville maximumsecurity prison, officials said.
Asked if he had any last words in the death chamber, the inmate said, “Let’s rock.”
Reporters witnessing the scene said at a news briefing afterward 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 before the electrocution.
In opting for the electric chair over a lethal injection, a choice Tennessee allows, Zagorski had said 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.
The execution was carried out shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday evening denied the inmate’s request for a stay. Zagorski’s attorneys 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 63-year-old inmate three weeks ago, a plan halted by Tennessee’s governor when Zagorski exercised his right to request the electric chair.
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. 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.