Tennessee Carries Out Second Execution By Electric Chair This Year

For the second time in a matter of weeks, Tennessee’s electric chair has been used to carry out a long-delayed death sentence. And on Thursday night at 7:25, David Earl Miller was pronounced dead.

The execution was carried out much like that of Edmund Zagorski in November. Guards strapped the 61-year-old to the state’s electric chair, used just three times since 1960. The warden at Riverbend Maximum Security Prison, dressed in a dark suit, asked if Miller had any last words, which is part of the protocol.

Miller mumbled, “Beats being on death row.” The warden asked him to say it again. Even reporters in the viewing room had to confirm with Miller’s public defender.

Miller had been on death row since he was sentenced after the brutal killing of 23-year-old Lee Standifer, a woman with an intellectual disability who he had been dating. He bludgeoned her body with a fire poker and stabbed her so many times that the jury couldn’t be shown the photos.

Outside of the correctional facility where he was executed, Stephen Kissinger, Miller’s public defender, blamed the violence on a troubled childhood.

“He cared deeply for Lee Standifer, and she would be alive today if it weren’t for a sadistic stepfather and a mother who violated every trust that a son should have,” he said, referring Miller’s abusive childhood, allegedly including rape by his own mother.

Both men who’ve died by electric chair in Tennessee this year actively chose electrocution over lethal injection, which they argued would cause even more pain.

Nashville Scene reporter Steven Hale, who witnessed Miller’s electrocution along with the lethal injection of Billy Ray Irick this year, noted that “lethal injection took longer,” given the three-drug protocol. He also noted that the face is visible during lethal injection, whereas the face is covered with a black shroud during electrocution.

The state has four more executions scheduled next year. All of their crimes were committeed before 1999, meaning under Tennessee law they will also have the option of choosing the electric chair.