From gallows to gurney: Six of East Tennessee's most infamous executions

 In this Aug. 16, 2010 file photo, Billy Ray Irick, on death row for raping and killing a 7-year-old girl in 1985, appears in a Knox County criminal courtroom in Knoxville, Tenn., arguing that he's too mentally ill to be executed by the state. The Tennessee Supreme Court has refused to stay Thursday's Aug. 9, 2018, scheduled execution of the convicted child killer while the state's new lethal injection protocol continues to be challenged on appeal. The order brings Tennessee within days of killing Irick with a three-drug cocktail, barring some last-minute change. (Michael Patrick/The Knoxville News Sentinel via AP, File)
In this Aug. 16, 2010 file photo, Billy Ray Irick, on death row for raping and killing a 7-year-old girl in 1985, appears in a Knox County criminal courtroom in Knoxville, Tenn., arguing that he's too mentally ill to be executed by the state. The Tennessee Supreme Court has refused to stay Thursday's Aug. 9, 2018, scheduled execution of the convicted child killer while the state's new lethal injection protocol continues to be challenged on appeal. The order brings Tennessee within days of killing Irick with a three-drug cocktail, barring some last-minute change. (Michael Patrick/The Knoxville News Sentinel via AP, File)
photo In this Aug. 16, 2010 file photo, Billy Ray Irick, on death row for raping and killing a 7-year-old girl in 1985, appears in a Knox County criminal courtroom in Knoxville, Tenn., arguing that he's too mentally ill to be executed by the state. The Tennessee Supreme Court has refused to stay Thursday's Aug. 9, 2018, scheduled execution of the convicted child killer while the state's new lethal injection protocol continues to be challenged on appeal. The order brings Tennessee within days of killing Irick with a three-drug cocktail, barring some last-minute change. (Michael Patrick/The Knoxville News Sentinel via AP, File)

On Thursday, Billy Ray Irick became the sixth man in Tennessee to die by lethal injection.

A total of 132 men have died like Irick - either by poison cocktail or electrocution - since Tennessee began carrying out executions at the main state prison in Nashville in 1916.

Before that, sheriffs hanged the condemned in the counties of their crimes. An estimate by the Death Penalty Information Center, which tracks capital punishment in the U.S., places Tennessee's hangings through those years at 210.

Read more at our news partner's website, knoxnews.com.

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