First inmate in five years executed by electric chair

Double murderer Edmund Zagorski has become the first person in five years to be put to death in the United States using the electric chair, after the Supreme Court denied a last-ditch appeal by the Tennessee inmate.

Zagorski was convicted of the killing of John Dale Dotson and Jimmy Porter in 1983. He lured the two men into a wooded area with the promise to sell them a large quantity of marijuana, before shooting them, cutting their throats and stealing their money.

According to The Independent, Zagorski had “asked for the electric chair over lethal injection believing it would be a quicker and less painful way to die”.

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Fox News reports that Zagorski is one of only 15 people to have been put to death using the electric chair since 2000, the “most recent being in Virginia in 2013”.

Tennessee is one of six states that allow condemned inmates whose crimes occurred before 1999 the choice between death by lethal injection or the electric chair. The last person to die by electric chair in Tennessee was executed in 2007.

The Chicago Tribune reports that when Zagorski was asked by the prison warden if he had any last words in the moments before his execution, he simply replied “let’s rock”.