Tennessee death row inmate declines to chose between the electric chair and lethal injection
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee death row inmate Harold Wayne Nichols declined Monday to choose between the electric chair and lethal injection for his Dec. 11 execution, meaning the state will use lethal injection by default.
Nichols was sentenced to death in 1990 after being convicted of raping and murdering Karen Pulley, a 21-year-old student at Chattanooga State University, two years earlier. Dorinda Carter, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Corrections, said in an email that she had two weeks to change her mind about choosing which method to use.
He was scheduled to be executed in 2020 and opted for the electric chair, but was later executed. a postponement was given Due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Tennessee inmates convicted of crimes before January 1999 choose electric shock rather than the state’s preferred method of lethal injection. Although many states still allow the use of the electric chair, the electric chair is only five times in the last decade they were all in Tennessee.
At the time that Nichols chose electrocution, Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol used three different drugs in series. It was a process that prisoner lawyers claimed was fraught with problems. Governor Bill Lee’s concerns in 2022 appeared to be justified. paused executionsIncluding the date of Nichols’ second execution. One independent review An investigation of the state’s lethal injection process found that none of the drugs prepared for the seven inmates executed in Tennessee since 2018 were properly tested.
The Criminal Chamber published a statement new execution protocol who used a single drug last December pentobarbital. Lawyers of several death penalty cases prisoners filed a lawsuit A hearing on the new protocol, however, is not scheduled to be held until April.
Nichols confessed to raping and murdering Pulley, as well as several other rapes in the Chattanooga area. Although he expressed remorse at the hearing, he admitted that he would have continued his violent behavior had he not been arrested.
