November 1
TENNESSEE----impending execution
Tennessee Inmate Edmund Zagorski Scheduled to Die Tonight By Electric Chair.
History Shows It Could Get Ugly.
Sentenced to death for a double murder, he chose electrocution over lethal
injection but is now arguing both are too cruel.
The last time someone in the United States was put to death by electric chair
was in 2013 when a Virginia triple murderer, Robert Gleason, opted for that
method of execution.
One of the media witnesses, Michael Owens, reported that Gleason died “with
fists partially clenched and smoke rising from his body,” his frame wracked
with spasms as two 1,000-volt jolts of electricity coursed between his calf and
his head.
That’s the scene that is poised to play out again Thursday night in Tennessee
unless another death-row inmate, Edmund Zagorski, convinces the Supreme Court
to halt his execution.
Or it could be much worse. Fordham Law professor Deborah Denno, a capital
punishment expert, catalogued state-sponsored electrocutions in a 2002 academic
paper and found 19 that she believed were botched.
“Severe burning, boiling body fluids, asphyxiation, and cardiac arrest, can
cause extreme pain when unconsciousness is not instantaneous,” she wrote.
When Pedro Medina was electrocuted in Florida in 1997, for the murder of a
teacher, the Associated Press account of what happened was stomach-churning.
“Blue and orange flames up to a foot long shot from the right side of Mr.
Medina's head and flickered for 6 to 10 seconds, filling the execution chamber
with smoke,” the correspondent wrote. “The smell of burnt flesh filled the
witness room in the Florida State Prison and lingered as observers left two
minutes after the execution.”
Tennessee, like most states, abandoned use of the electric chair in recent
years with the adoption of lethal injection as the preferred method. But in
2014, facing a shortage of drugs thanks to anti-execution activists, lawmakers
voted to make the electric chair a backup option.
Zagorski, who was sentenced to for slitting the throats of John Dale Dotson and
Jimmy Porter in 1983, asked for the electric chair over the needle, citing
recent lethal injections that went awry. At the time, his attorney said the
drugs would make Zagorski experience “10 to 18 minutes of drowning, suffocation
and chemical burning.”
The original Oct. 11 execution date was then postponed to give the state time
to prepare the chair. Meanwhile, Zagorski’s lawyers filed a new round of
appeals, which were unsuccessful.
On Thursday morning he appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that both lethal
injection and electrocution violated the Constitution’s protection against
cruel and unusual punishment.
The petition argued that Zagorski was forced to choose between two unacceptable
options, one of which has been banned by at least two state courts.
“The supreme courts of Georgia and Nebraska have both found the electric chair
to be cruel and unusual under their respective state constitutions,” the
lawyers wrote. “Georgia concluded that, factually, the electric chair carries
the ‘specter of excruciating pain’ and the ‘certainty of cooked brains and
blistered bodies.’”
If the high court denies Zagorski’s request for a delay, at 7 p.m. he will
moved from the cell next to the death chamber and put in the electric chair.
Straps and sponges soaked in salt water for better conductivity will be placed,
and a shroud will cover his face.
Then the executioner will turn on the electricity and send 1,750 volts through
his body. What happens next, as history has shown, is anyone’s guess.
(source: thedailybeast.com)
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