NASHVILLE (RNN) - A Tennessee death row inmate is scheduled for execution at 8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CT on Thursday – making him the second person to use the electric chair since the 1960s.
Edmund Zagorski, now 63, was sentenced to death for the 1984 murders of two men. His attorneys filed an application for a stay of execution with the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday.
Zagorski chose to die by the electric chair instead of lethal injection, which is the main method of execution in Tennessee.
Offenders who committed a capital offense before Jan. 1, 1999, can opt for death by electrocution.
Zagorski will be shocked twice; the first shock will be for 20 seconds, there will be a 15-second pause, then the last shock follows for another 15 seconds. Each shock will deliver 1,750 volts of electricity.
Since 1960, Tennessee has only used electrocution once, and that was 2007.
A lethal injection could take up to 18 minutes to take his life, and Zagorski’s lawyers argued those last minutes would be “utter terror and agony.”
That method of execution has come under scrutiny for a series of botched executions and for the pain caused during others.
Drug companies, facing backlash, also stopped manufacturing and selling the drug to states for the purpose of executions
Zagorski’s last meal request is pickled pig knuckles and pigtails.
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