NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – A Tennessee inmate set to be put to death next week has requested the electric chair and not the state’s preferred method of a lethal injection, becoming the second inmate this year to make that choice as an execution date loomed.
Lawyers for David Earl Miller have argued that Tennessee’s midazolam-based, three-drug injection method causes excruciating pain. In a court filing Monday, attorneys for the state said Miller had picked the electric chair, though Miller’s attorneys had requested an extension of a deadline for him to make a choice.
Miller became the second death row inmate in Tennessee to request electrocution since Edmund Zagorski, who was put to death in the state’s electric chair on Nov. 1.
Miller, 61, is scheduled to die on Dec. 6 for the 1981 slaying of 23-year-old Lee Standifer in Knoxville.
Prisoners whose crimes occurred before 1999 have the option to choose electrocution. Zagorski made that choice in October, stating that he thought dying in the electric chair would be quicker and less painful than a chemical injection. He was only the second inmate put to death in the electric chair in Tennessee since 1960.