Tennessee death row inmate Edmund Zagorski chooses electric chair for lethal injection

The death row convict Edmund Zagorski has chosen the electric chair for his next scheduled execution on Thursday. Zagorski's decision was taken just hours after the Tennessee Supreme Court judgment, which approved the controversial protocol for injecting three drugs into the state.

Zagorski was one of 33 detainees to have filed a lawsuit, claiming that the drug cocktail used in lethal injections was torturing detainees to death. However, the Supreme Court of Tennessee stated in its judgment that the trial "failed to establish that the current lethal injection protocol to three drugs violated the prohibition of cruel sentences." and unusual under the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of Tennessee ".

The 63-year-old lawyer, Kelley Henry, issued a statement Monday night in response to the Tennessee Supreme Court ruling.

"Faced with the choice of two unconstitutional methods of execution, Mr. Zagorski said that if his execution was to move forward, he felt that the electric chair was the least of the two evils." 10-18 minutes of drowning, "he said. Choking and chemicals, we informed the prison officials of its decision within two hours of the decision of the Tennessee Supreme Court, "wrote Henry.

Zagorski was convicted in April 1984 of killing two men – John Dale Dotson and Jimmy Porter – in Robertson County. The authorities claimed that Zagorski shot them, slit their throats and stole them after luring them into the woods, promising to sell them a lot of marijuana.

Parallel to the request for electric chair, Henry said that he would request the suspension of the execution of Zagorski in order to give the Supreme Court time to review the case.

Dotson's wife, Marsha, recently commented that she still remembered her husband as the man she loved.

"Dale was a good man. He had a good heart, he was a good supplier, he took care of me and my family, "said Marsha. [Zagorski] could have let my husband and Jimmy live. He could have taken the money and continued his business. Nobody would have gone to the police because it was money for drugs, it was an attempt to buy 100 pounds. marijuana. "

She added, according to News Channel 5: "What's more inhuman than the way he killed Dale and Jimmy?" He shot them two bullets in the stomach, then went down and slit their throat. it is more cruel and inhuman? My autopsy lived between 3 and 5 minutes according to the autopsy and Jimmy lived between 5 and 7 minutes.He will not live 3 minutes, so long, when we make him this lethal injection And what's he going to do, have a heart attack and die, or will he just shut his lungs and his heart? He will not suffer as long as my husband and Jimmy have suffered. I do not pity him there. "

In August, Tennessee executed its first inmate in nearly a decade and the Supreme Court then refused to stay execution. Tennessee is one of only nine states to allow electrocutions, and only 14 of the 871 inmates executed in the United States since 2000 have been killed in an electric wheelchair, according to the death penalty information center. .

This is a representative image showing "Old Sparky", the disused electric chair in which 361 prisoners were executed between 1924 and 1964 at the Texas Prison Museum in Huntsville, Texas on November 5, 2007. Photo: Getty Images / Fanny Carrier