Tennessee inmate David Earl Miller was put to death via electric chair Thursday evening, using his final moments to say electrocution “beats being on death row.” The 61-year-old, convicted of killing a 21-year-old Knoxville woman in 1981, was pronounced dead at 7:25 p.m. at a Nashville maximum-security prison. The AP reports two “jolts of electricity” were administered before Miller’s muscles started to “clench” and blinds were lowered. Miller was the second electric chair execution in the state in just over a month, and only the third Tennessee inmate to be executed by the electric chair since 1960. Fellow Tennessee inmate Edmund Zagorski opted for the electric chair over lethal injection in November. Inmates have argued in court that the state’s current lethal injection methods causes a “prolonged and torturous death,” citing the August death of Billy Ray Irick. Irick reportedly coughed, turned “dark purple,” and died 20 minutes after his injection.
