A man from Tennessee says "let's rock" before being executed by an electric chair

NASHVILLE, Tennessee – The last words of a Tennessee detainee were "toppled" just before he became the first man executed on an electric chair in this state since 2007. Edmund ZagorskiThe 63-year-old journalist was put to death Thursday for shooting two men and slitting their throats during a drug-related transaction several decades ago.

Zagorski was declared dead at 19:26. Thursday, in a maximum security prison in Nashville, officials said.

When asked if he had had one last word in the death chamber, the inmate replied, "Let's go!", Shortly before the execution.

A journalist who witnessed the scene said at a press briefing held after the execution that Zagorski was smiling occasionally while he was tied up, just before a sponge was placed on his head, then that his face was veiled. Witnesses said that the inmate 's fists then tightened when electricity was applied and his body seemed to lift. He did not move once the procedure was over.

The reporter said that Zagorski's lawyer nodded, smiled and poked in his heart just before the start of the execution. Asked about her actions, Kelly Henry said, "I told him that when I put my hand on my heart, it was me who held it in my heart."

She added that Zagorski had told him that the last thing he wanted to see was his smiling face. She made an effort to smile at him before the shroud was put on her face.

By choosing the electric chair rather than a lethal injection as Tennessee allowed him, Zagorski said it would be a quicker and less painful way to die. He became the only second person to die in the Tennessee electric wheelchair since 1960. Nationally, only 14 other people have been put to death in an electric wheelchair since 2000, including a Virginia detainee in 2013 .

He was originally scheduled to be put to death on October 11, but Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam granted him and the courts a temporary stay until October 21, reported WTVF, an affiliate of CBS Nashville. The execution was then postponed to 1 November.

Between the lethal injection and the electric chair, Zagorski chose the chair. Zagorski was one of 33 detainees who filed a lawsuit, claiming that the drug cocktail used in the lethal injections was hurting the convict.

The execution came shortly after the US Supreme Court dismissed the prisoner's request for suspension on Thursday night. Zagorski's lawyers had argued that it was unconstitutional to force him to choose between electric chair and lethal injection.

The state almost made an injection at Zagorski three weeks ago, a plan stopped by the governor of Tennessee when Zagorski exercised his right to request the electric wheelchair.

According to the Supreme Court's statement, Judge Sonia Sotomayor was the dissenting voice on Thursday, highlighting Zagorski's difficult decision to opt for the electric chair. In Tennessee, convicted prisoners whose crimes were committed prior to 1999 may choose the electric chair, one of the few states to allow such a choice.

"He did not do it because he thought it was a humane way of dying, but because he thought that the three-drug cocktail that Tennessee had planned to have was one of the best." use was even worse, "said Sotomayor in a statement. "Given what most people think of the electric chair, it's hard to imagine a more striking testament – from a person more at stake – to the legitimate fears raised by lethal injecting drugs than the Tennessee uses. "

Zagorski was convicted of a double kill in April 1983. Prosecutors said that Zagorski had shot John Dotson and Jimmy Porter, then slit their throat after stealing the two men after asking them to go to court. buy marijuana.

The Supreme Court of the United States has never ruled on whether the use of the electric chair violated the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment imposed by the 8th Amendment, but it approached approximately 20 years after a series of failed electrocutions in Florida. In the 1990s, during two executions, detainees were smoked and burned. In 1999, blood was spilled under the mask of an inmate. Shortly after, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge of the electric chair. But the case was dropped when Florida made the lethal injection its main mode of execution.

Republican Gov. Bill Haslam refused to intervene in Zagorski's case, despite pleas by former jurors who sentenced the prisoner, the correctional officers and the Zagorski priest.

At the time of Zagorski's conviction, Tennessee jurors had no opportunity to consider life without parole. Each state now requires juries to evaluate this option in death penalty cases.

The Tennessee electric chair was inspected on October 10 and was found to meet the criteria for performance, according to official documents.

The device had been rebuilt in the late 1980s by a self-taught expert who had publicly worried about the device's malfunction on Thursday. It was only used to run a person before: Daryl Holton, in 2007.

Before Holton, the last person to die in the Tennessee electric chair was William Tines in 1960.

Zagorski had been on death row for 34 years, the second largest in Tennessee.

Protesters held vigils on Thursday in Knoxville and Memphis, as well as at Nashville's maximum-security jail where Zagorski was executed on Thursday. Some have raised a banner with the words: "A free Tennessee is without execution."