The last words of Tennessee man in electric chair: & # 039; Let & # 039; s rock & # 039;
The last words of Tennessee man in electric chair: & # 039; Let & # 039; s rock & # 039;
The last words of a Tennessee prisoner were "let's rock" moments before he became the first man to be executed in the electric chair in that state since 2007, sentenced to death for the murders of two men during a drug deal in robbery decades ago.
Edmund Zagorski, 63, was pronounced dead at 7:26 p.m. On Thursday in a maximum security prison in Nashville, authorities said.
When asked if he had any last word in the death chamber, the prisoner said: "We are going to rock" shortly before the execution was carried out.
The reporters who witnessed the scene said in a later briefing that he alternated between grimacing and smiling as he lay bound and that a sponge was placed on his head and then a shroud on his face. The witnesses said that the prisoner's fists clenched when electricity began to flow and his body seemed to rise, but did not move once the execution process was over.
By opting for the electric chair instead of a lethal injection as Tennessee allowed, Zagorski argued that it would be a quicker and less painful way to die. He became the second person to die in the electric chair in Tennessee since 1960. Across the country, only 14 people have died in the electric chair since 2000, including a prisoner in Virginia in 2013.
The execution was carried out shortly after the Supreme Court of the USA. UU On Thursday night, he will reject the inmate's request for a suspension. Zagorski's lawyers had argued that it was unconstitutional to force him to choose between 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 stopped by the governor of Tennessee when Zagorski exercised his right to request the electric chair.
The Supreme Court statement said Judge Sonia Sotomayor was the dissenting voice, noting Zagorski's decision to opt for the electric chair.
"He did it not because he thought it was a human way of dying, but because he thought the cocktail of three drugs 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 surprising testament, from a person with more at stake, to the legitimate fears generated by the lethal injection drugs used by Tennessee."
Zagorski was found guilty of the murders of two men in April 1983 during a drug deal. Prosecutors said Zagorski shot John Dotson and Jimmy Porter and then cut their throats after stealing the two men after they came to him to buy marijuana.
In Tennessee, convicted inmates whose crimes occurred before 1999 can choose the electric chair, one of six states that allow such an election.
The Supreme Court of the USA UU He has never ruled if the use of the electric chair violates the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishments, but it was closed about 20 years ago after a series of failed electrocutions in Florida. During two executions in the 1990s, smoke and flames shot out of the heads of the inmates. In 1999, blood was spilled under the mask of a prisoner.
Shortly after, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to the electric chair. But the case was abandoned when Florida applied its main method of execution to lethal injection.
Republican Governor Bill Haslam refused to intervene in the Zagorski case despite receiving requests from former jurors who sentenced the prisoner, prison officials and the Zagorski priest. An application for commutation of Zagorski's sentence to life imprisonment argued that Zagorski had been an "exemplary" prisoner who never had a disciplinary offense.
At the time of Zagorski's conviction, Tennessee juries were not given the option to consider life without parole. Each state now requires juries to weigh that option in death penalty cases.
The Tennessee electric chair was inspected on October 10 and found to meet the criteria for an execution, according to state documents.
The device was originally reconstructed in the late 1980s by a self-taught execution expert who feared that the device would malfunction on Thursday. It has only been used to execute a person before: Daryl Holton, in 2007.
Before Holton, the last person to die in the electric chair of Tennessee was William Tines in 1960.
Zagorski has been sentenced to death for 34 years, the second longest in Tennessee.
Groups opposing the Tennessee execution plan organized nighttime vigils in cities such as Nashville, Knoxville and Memphis.
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Associated Press writer Travis Loller contributed to this report in Nashville.
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