Tennessee executes murderer Edmund Zagorski in an electric chair – according to his request

November 1, 2018 / 16:36 GMT / Update 01:09 GMT

By David K. Li

A double murderer was put to death in an electric wheelchair on Thursday night when the state of Tennessee responded to the cruel demand of the murderer to perish by electrocution and not by lethal injection.

Edmund Zagorski, 63, was pronounced dead at 19:26. CT at Riverbend Maximum Security in Nashville, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Prison Department said at a news conference.

He was the first death of electric president of the country in five years.

A series of late appeals by Zagorski's legal team – claiming that his advice was ineffective and that the electric wheelchair was a cruel and unusual punishment – were dismissed by a federal court and the US Supreme Court.

Zagorski's last words were "Let's Rock", according to eyewitnesses, including a journalist from Affiliate NBC WSMV. At a press conference following the electrocution, witnesses said that Zagorski sometimes smiled but winced just before the officials fired the electricity.

According to prison officials, he had a last meal of pork shanks and marinated pork tails.

While Tennessee normally kills inmates by lethal injection, Zagorski wants to die in an electric wheelchair, claiming that 1750 volts will be less painful than receiving a lethal cocktail of intravenous drugs.

State law allows convicted convicts who committed crimes before January 1999 to opt for electrocution.

Zagorski, who murdered two men in 1983 as part of a drug deal that went wrong, was due to die by lethal injection on October 11 and the murderer opted for electrocution. State authorities had initially rejected Zagorski's preference for electrocution, claiming that his request had arrived too late.

A few hours before the planned execution, Governor Bill Haslam ordered a 10-day deadline for the state to prepare the electric chair for Zagroski's use.

The last time Tennessee used this chair, it was in 2007 when the state executed Daryl Keith Holton, a 45-year-old Gulf War veteran, who had murdered his four children.

Governor Haslam said this week that he was confident that the electric chair would work properly Thursday night.

"I have a lot of confidence in our Correctional Department staff," he said. "We talked to them regularly and they assured us (the president is ready)."

Zagorski was transferred to a special detention cell near the death chamber on Tuesday morning, before Thursday night's execution.

That's when an execution team sat will sit Zagorski on the electric chair and wrap sponges soaked with salt water around his ankles and his head, to better conduct electricity.

In legal filings, Zagorki said that the death at the end of a syringe probably lasted "10 to 18 minutes … in a total terror and agony," he said.

Zagorski was sentenced to death for the assassinations of John Dotson and Jimmy Porter in 1983, two 35-year-old men who were considering buying him 100 pounds of marijuana.

Zagorski is the 1,485th execution executed in the United States since the reinstatement of capital punishment in 1976, according to the death penalty information center in Washington, DC.

But it was only the eighth death sentence in the voluntary state since 1976, although one already exists this year. William "Billy" Ray Irick was put to death on August 9 for the rape and murder of a 7-year-old girl.

Zagorski was the 159th person put to death on an electric chair in the United States since 1976. But the most recent electrocution dates back to 2013, when Virginia executed Robert Charles Gleason Jr., who murdered two other inmates.