Edmund Zagorski dies by electric chair

He is the 134th person killed by Tennessee since 1916 and the second person this year after the execution of Billy Ray Irick by lethal injection on August 9th. He is the first person to die in electric chair since the execution of Daryl Horton in 2007.

Zagorski was convicted of the murders of John Dale Dotson of Hickman County and Jimmy Porter of Dickson in April 1983. Prosecutors said Zagorski had lured them into the woods of Robertson County with the promise of their arrest. sell marijuana, slaughter them, slit their throats and steal their money.

Two minutes before the start of the session, at 7 pm, the US Supreme Court dismissed Zagorski's appeal, citing the unconstitutionality of the choice between the electric chair and the lethal injection.

More: The execution of a Tennessee detainee was torture, according to an expert

More: "I'm not good: the killer of a homosexual man sentenced to death by lethal injection in Ohio."

As dark clouds loomed over the Riverbend maximum security facility in Nashville and as the sun changed the sky from bright pink to black, a van escorted by the police arrived.

Eight people suspected of belonging to the family of victims have entered the prison to attend the execution.

They waited in front of a large covered window that overlooked the execution room where, on the other side of the glass, Zagorski sat, stuck in the electric chair, held by buckles and straps with electrodes fixed at the feet.

The blinds were opened to allow other witnesses to see Zagorski dressed in his cotton clothes, smiling and wincing at the group.

Zagorski said his last words: "Let rock be played".

He was smiling in the wired armchair as the prison staff put a wet sponge soaked in salt and a metal helmet on his freshly shaved head.

Zagorski raised his eyebrows, seeming to communicate with his lawyer, Kelley Henry. She sat shaking her head and patting her heart, looking at Zagorski.

"I told him, when I put my hand on my heart, it was me who held it in my heart," said Henry to the Tennessean. She said that Zagorski smiled to encourage him to return his smile.

Then his face was covered with a black shroud.

The guard gave the signal to proceed. Zagorski raised his right hand several times to try to look like a wave attempt, before shaking his hands in a fist as the first stream ran 1,750 volts of electricity into his body for 20 seconds.

There was a short pause before the second shock was given for 15 seconds.

The doctor responsible for the death appeared in order to check Zagorski's civil status.

Zagorski was dead. The blinds in the closed room.

Ten minutes later, the families of the victims left the building and left in the van without speaking in public.

"Edmund Zagorski's death was caused by electrocution on November 1, 2018," said Neysa Taylor, director of communications of the Correctional Department of Tennessee, during a press conference.

TO CLOSE

Edmund Zagorski was executed at 19:26 on November 1, 2018.
Ayrika L Whitney, The Tennessean

Zagorski's death comes after last-minute court quarrel

Zagorski was about to die three weeks ago.

His request to die by an electric chair saved his life – at least for a few weeks, when Governor Bill Haslam granted a reprieve three hours before his planned execution on October 11.

The move allowed the state to prepare for the presidency in last-minute legal wrangling.

Zagorski asked for death by electric wheelchair hoping that death would happen instantly – the "lesser of two evils" compared to a lethal injection, said federal public defender Kelley Henry.

According to a doctor who examined Irick's execution, Irick felt an excruciating pain resembling torture before his death. Experts say the detainees have the feeling of "drowning and burning at the same time", which would be caused by a lethal injection.

The question of whether and how Zagorski's death was going on continued to grow over the last month.

In his 1984 murder trial, Zagorski, then 28, told his defense team that he was demanding the death penalty and forbade him to contact his family or search his past, according to reports. Supreme Court of Tennessee documents.

But once on death row, Zagorski changed his mind. Thirty-four years and 22 calls later, he and his new defense team fought for a last-minute court decision to save his life, claiming his attorneys had made mistakes in representing him.

On October 10, the US Circuit Court of Appeals suspended the appeal. The state responded the next morning and asked the US Supreme Court to refuse a stay and allow the execution to continue.

Zagorski had asked the federal court to force the state to use the electric chair for his execution. The state had initially refused and was planning to proceed with a lethal injection, but District Judge Aleta Trauger decided this afternoon that the state could not use lethal injection until Zagorski's claim had been heard.

Trauger's decision probably triggered Haslam's request for stay.

An incredible childhood

Zagorski grew up in poverty in Tecumseh, Michigan, about an hour southwest of Detroit, according to an appeal to the Tennessee Supreme Court in 1998.

His father played a small role in his life and his mother, weakened by a brain injury, had wanted a girl, according to the call.

He could not read or write between 8 and 10 years. He developed a stuttering.

He did not have glasses for a while, despite poor vision.

Early on, he was exposed to drugs and alcohol.

The appeal documents show that Zagorski had had "minor scams with the law as a minor and convictions for breaking federal drug law", but he had not been convicted of crimes violent before the murders of John Dale Dotson and Jimmy Porter in April 1983.

If the jurors had known that, Zagorski and his team argued, it would have prevented him from being sentenced to death.

A murder "calculated"

On April 23, Dotson was planning with his friend Porter to meet a man he knew as Jesse Lee Hardin to buy 100 pounds of marijuana.

Under the name of Hardin, Zagorski told Dotson that he had worked as a mercenary in South America and had done oil drilling near New Orleans.

Although no more than acquaintances, the men agreed to meet with Zagorski and the authorities then found their bodies in an isolated wooded area near Interstate 65 in Robertson County.

As her husband was not returning home after the meeting, Marsha Dotson said she knew immediately that something had happened. Although the research started right away, Porter's and Dotson's bodies were not found until about two weeks later.

There was a national manhunt for Zagorski. He was eventually sighted in Ohio and was apprehended after a shootout with the police.

The inmate's statements about his stay in South America could never have been verified, according to Sumner County Attorney Ray Whitley, the 1984 Assistant District Attorney, who tried the case and asked for the death penalty.

"Whether he is or not, who knows," said the prosecutor. "He was apparently a very convincing person to make friends and get these people to believe enough to go into the woods with him."

A fight for a "rehabilitated man"

In the 1984 trial, life without parole was not an option. Zargorski's lawyer, Robert Hutton, insisted that his sentence be commuted.

The jury had no opportunity to sentence him to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, as their only choice at the 1984 trial was death or life with the possibility of parole.

According to the request for pardon, six of the surviving jurors in the case agreed that the life sentence without parole was an appropriate punishment for Zagorski. Today, no death sentence would be pronounced if a single juror wanted life without the possibility of parole.

And while Marsha Dotson for more than 30 years wanted nothing more than to see Zagorski be put to death for her crimes, she has since "softened".

"I realized that it's not for me to condemn someone, to let him die. I can not play God, "said Dotson.

Hutton also asserted that Zaroski had also demonstrated "exemplary" behavior during his term of imprisonment as a "rehabilitated man". He has never received a single disciplinary offense and officers and volunteers have testified to his trustworthy, hardworking, respectful and peacemaking behavior.

"His extraordinary rehabilitation shows that if you commute Ed's sentence, he will continue to make the prison community a safer place for officers and inmates," Hutton wrote in his petition.

The Catholic Bishops of the Dioceses of Nashville and Knoxville also spoke before Zagorski's execution.

Buy a photo

Buy a photo

Buy a photo

Buy a photo

Buy a photo

Buy a photo

Buy a photo

Buy a photo

Buy a photo

Buy a photo

Buy a photo

Buy a photo

Buy a photo

Buy a photo

Buy a photo

Buy a photo

Buy a photo

Buy a photo

Buy a photo

Buy a photo

Buy a photo

Buy a photo

Buy a photo

Buy a photo

Buy a photo

Buy a photo

Buy a photo

Buy a photo

Buy a photo

Automatic reading

Thumbnails poster

Show captions

Last slide next

What's next for executions in Tennessee?

The debate on capital punishment has burned in Tennessee. Like many states, the Tennessee Death Penalty Act was overturned by the US Supreme Court in 1972.

The authorities quickly adopted new laws regulating the sentence in 1975. However, prosecution has maintained the death penalty pending, and it was not until 2000 that this execution took place.

Six men were put to death by lethal injection and one was executed with the help of an electric chair until 2009. A break has occurred until the day before. 39, execution of the journalist, 9 August.

Irick and Zagorski were part of a group of 32 death row offenders who sued the state for its lethal injection method. The Tennessee Supreme Court ruled in a 4-1 majority in October that drugs may continue in Tennessee even though medical experts have said the controversial protocol of three state drugs tortures detainees to torture.

In the past, the state also asked if the electric chair needed to be reused. It is unclear how Zagorski's demand for the post of president will affect future executions, but an executing expert expects more death row prisoners to follow suit.

Death row convict David Earl Miller is scheduled to be executed on December 6. Miller, 61, was convicted of killing a disabled woman with an incendiary poker in 1981. He is the oldest member of the Tennessee death row.

Contribute: Natalie Allison.

Read or share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/11/01/execution-edmund-zagorski-tennessee-electric-chair/1853152002/