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Sentenced to death Edmund Zagorski in an undated photo published by the Department of Correctional Services of Tennessee.
AP
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Sentenced to death Edmund Zagorski in an undated photo published by the Department of Correctional Services of Tennessee.
AP
Edmund Zagorski was executed Thursday by a power committee president in a Nashville, Tennessee jail after challenging the constitutionality of lethal injecting drugs before choosing to die by electrocution.
When asked if he had a last word, Zagorski, 63, simply replied, "Let's go rock."
Zagorksi is the first man executed on an electric chair in Tennessee since 2007. He was convicted in April 1983 of having murdered two men – stealing them and slicing their throats during a related transaction. to drugs.
His execution took place after a series of legal maneuvers in recent weeks to delay the action. The US Supreme Court rejected Thursday evening an appeal to suspend execution. Zagorski had asked the High Court to consider whether it was unconstitutional to compel him to choose between a lethal injection or a lethal injection.
He requested the electric wheelchair in early October, after the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled that lethal injection drug use was allowed. His federal public defender, Kelley Henry, said Zagorski had chosen the electric chair because the Tennessee three-drug lethal injection protocol "is a torture" and that death by electrocution would be faster and less painful.
Sonia Sotomayor, a US Supreme Court justice, commented on Zagorski's decision to request the electric wheelchair.
"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 drugs in the world." using it was even worse, "Sotomayor said in a statement quoted by the Associated Press. "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. "
The AP also reported that witnesses had said, during execution, "the fists of the detainee … were tight when the electricity had been applied and that his body had appeared to be lifting. He did not move once the procedure was over. "
Zagorski is the second inmate executed in the Tennessee electric wheelchair since 1960. He has been sentenced to death for 34 years, the second since Tennessee.
The execution reopens the debate in this state on the death penalty, some experts claiming that more convicted prisoners could also ask for the electric wheelchair.
The oldest member of the Tennessee death row, 61-year-old David Earl Miller, is scheduled to be executed in December.
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