Death row inmate Edmund Zagorski’s execution is scheduled for Thursday, November 1. Zagorski was originally scheduled to be killed by lethal injection last month but it was pushed forward to this week when he requested that he die by electric chair. The state took time to prepare the chair and test it to ensure that it worked. It hasn’t been used in an execution since 2007.
Zagorski’s attorneys filed a federal suit last Friday in hopes of stopping the execution. In that motion, lawyers argued death by electrocution was unconstitutionally cruel, and that the attorney selected to attend the execution should have access to a phone should the execution go wrong. U.S. District courts largely tossed out the suit, except for the request for phone access, which was granted on Monday.
The builder of Tennessee’s electric chair has expressed concern over its functionality. Fred Leuchter says changes made to the machine since he maintained it could cause a malfunction.
The Tennessee Department of Correction no longer works with Leuchter. He was disgraced in 1990, after claiming there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz during the Holocaust. It was also revealed that while Leuchter had worked with many states to develop their own execution devices, he had no degree or official certification to be an engineer.
Tennessee offers the electric chair to inmates who were convicted before 1999. Zagorski chose the chair after the Tennessee Supreme Court upheld the state’s lethal injection protocol. Tennessee’s new lethal three-drug mixture has been controversial; its opponents say the cocktail is too slow and painful to be used.
This story was researched and reported by WUOT News intern Levi Johnson.