A double-murderer will be executed in the electric chair on Thursday evening after a last meal of pickled pig knuckles and tails.
Edmund Zagorski is set to die after a court late on Wednesday rejected a last-minute appeal to stop his execution.
The 63-year-old was sentenced to death in 1984 for murdering two men inside a drug den.
Zagorski chose the electric chair after his legal challenge to Tennessee’s midazolam-based lethal injection protocol failed.
His lawyers argued the method would cause prolonged agonizing pain, after a series of botched executions using the drug in recent years.
But the 6th Circuit Court of Appeal said it found the legal challenge arguing the use of the electric chair was unconstitutional to be ‘meritless,’ The Tennessean reports.
They said he could not choose his method of execution and then also challenge it.
Edmund Zagorski (left, in a 1981 booking photo and right, more recently) will be executed in the electric chair on Thursday evening after a last meal of pickled pig knuckles and tails
He chose pickled pig knuckles and pig tails as his last meal on Wednesday. A stock photo shows cooked pig tails
He said he he would rather have 35 seconds in total of two 1,750 volt shocks over an excruciatingly painful death by the lethal injection that could take up to 18 minutes to kill him.
His attorneys say he believes death by electrocution will be quicker, but they maintain that both methods are unconstitutional.
Zagorski will feast on pickled pig knuckles (pictured, stock photo) before he dies
Zagorski’s attorney Kelley Henry said she planned to appeal the court’s decision to the Supreme Court on Thursday morning, the Tennessean reports.
A request for an execution stay based on claims of ineffective counsel at trial also remains open.
His execution is now scheduled for Thursday evening.
The Tennessee Department of Correction announced Wednesday that Zagorski’s last meal will be pickled pig knuckles and pig tails.
Death row inmates are allowed $20 for a special meal before they’re executed.
Zagorski was originally scheduled to be executed October 11, but that got delayed due to legal challenges and a last minute reprieve from Governor Bill Haslam.
At that time, Zagorski chose to forgo having a final meal and instead eat what the rest of the inmates would eat for dinner.
Zagorski was sentenced to die in 1984 for the murder of two men in a drug deal.
He asked for death by electrocution on October 8 after Tennessee’s Supreme Court upheld the state’s controversial lethal injection cocktail.
Experts have said it would cause an extremely painful death.
Zagorski will be only the second person put to death by electrocution in Tennessee since 1960. Daryl Holton chose to die in the electric chair in 2007.
The last person to be executed by electrocution in the United States was Robert Gleason, who was put to death in Virginia in 2013.
Tennessee’s electric chair was inspected on October 10 of this year and found to meet the criteria for an execution, state documents show.
Tennessee’s electric chair is seen in 1999. Ricky Bell, the warden at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, gives a tour of the prison’s execution chamber. The chair, which hasn’t been used since 2007, was inspected on October 10
Attorney Kelley Henry argues before the Tennessee Supreme Court that the latest three-drug cocktail used in executions will cause excruciating pain on October 3, 2018
But the self-taught execution expert who built it is worried the device will malfunction.
Botched executions by lethal injections
The United States executed 8,776 people between 1890 and 2010 – and 276 of those were botched, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Death by lethal injection had the highest rate of botched executions during that period at 7.12 per cent.
Electrocution, in comparison had a 1.92 per cent rate.
In recent years, the drug midazolam has been the subject of multiple legal challenges over its use as a sedative in lethal injection executions.
Medical experts warned the drug may not be strong enough to keep a prisoner unconscious once he starts to feel pain.
In several recent executions the drug failed to render prisoners fully unconscious, causing them intense suffering prior to death.
Ohio halted executions in 2014 after the botched execution of Dennis McGuire (pictured) using midazolam
Ohio halted executions in 2014 after the botched execution of Dennis McGuire using midazolam. The prisoner gasped for air for some 25 minutes before dying.
In a lawsuit filed after the execution, McGuire’s family said he experienced ‘repeated cycles of snorting, gurgling and arching his back, appearing to writhe in pain.’
The lawsuit said: ‘It looked and sounded as though he was suffocating.’
A federal appeals court in 2017 granted Ohio permission to resume executions, after officials increased the dose of the drug by a factor of 50.
Ronald Bert Smith, Jr. heaved, gasped and coughed while struggling for breath for 13 minutes after the lethal drugs were administered in Alabama on December 8, 2016.
He was pronounced dead 34 minutes after the execution began.
In February, Doyle Lee Hamm’s execution by lethal injection failed in Alabama
In February this year, Doyle Lee Hamm’s execution by lethal injection failed in Alabama.
Despite warnings from Hamm’s defense counsel that it would be impossible to find a vein as Hamm suffered from advanced lymphatic cancer and carcinoma, the state went forward with the execution.
For two and a half hours, the executioners tried in vain to find a vein.
Hamm with numerous puncture marks, including six in his groin and others that punctured his bladder and penetrated his femoral artery before the execution was called of as a midnight deadline that prohibited further attempts approached.
Meanwhile, the state of Nevada last month postponed an execution after midazolam-manufacturer Alvogen successfully sued to stop its product from being used in executions.
Fred Leuchter had a successful career in the execution business before his reputation was tainted by his claim that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz.
He is no longer welcome in the prison system.
Tennessee’s chair is just one of many execution devices Leuchter worked on between 1979 and 1990, according to an article by Fordham University professor Deborah Denno in the William and Mary Law Review.
In addition to electric chairs, Leuchter built, refurbished and consulted on gas chambers, lethal injection machines and a gallows for at least 27 states.
But after his comments about the Holocaust, it came to light that he had neither an engineering degree nor a license, even though he promoted himself as an engineer. His rise and fall was portrayed in a 2000 documentary.
Nonetheless, Leuchter stands behind the electric chair he rebuilt in 1988, relying on skills picked up designing navigational and surveillance equipment and a careful study of documents describing early executions.
But his concern is that Tennessee’s chair will fail because of changes others made to it after he was no longer allowed to service it.
‘What I’m worried about now is Tennessee’s got an electric chair that’s going to hurt someone or cause problems. And it’s got my name on it,’ Leuchter said. ‘I don’t think it’s going to be humane.’
Governor Haslam said he is confident the execution can be carried out without problems.
‘I have a great deal of confidence in our Department of Correction folks. … We’ve spoken with them regularly and they’ve assured us’ the chair is ready.
Tennessee asked Leuchter to refurbish its chair in 1988, when it was facing the possibility of its first execution in decades.
‘It looked like it was made for a midget or something,’ Leuchter said.
So he built a new chair that incorporated wood from the original, which he was told was from the old gallows, and replaced the chair’s electrodes.
He also replaced the old leather straps that tether prisoners to the chair with quick-release nylon belts, to aid guards tasked with removing bodies after executions.
He trained prison workers and gave them certificates as ‘electrocution technicians.’
Leuchter said he sold the original chair.
A collector of ‘murderabilia’ listed it on eBay in 2000. It now resides in the Alcatraz East Crime Museum in the Smoky Mountains.
Denno said electric chairs have ‘a history of botches that has only gotten worse.’
In two Florida executions in the 1990s, smoke and flames shot from the condemned inmates’ heads. In 1999, blood spilled from under an inmate’s mask.
Shortly afterward, the Supreme Court agreed to decide whether the electric chair violates the 8th Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
But the case was dropped after Florida switched to lethal injection.
Tennessee has executed only one person in Leuchter’s electric chair. Daryl Holton died that way in 2007.
In preparation, an electrical engineer reduced the voltage from 2,640 to 1,750 and raised the amperage from 5 to 7.
The timing was also changed, from two, one-minute jolts with a 10-second pause between, to a 20-second and 15-second jolt with a 15-second pause between. The execution was successful.
But Leuchter said he feels the chair now is ‘defective and shouldn’t be used.’
‘It worked the first time, but I think they were lucky,’ he said.
Fred Leuchter (center) stands near the control panel for the electric chair he built for Tennessee in 1988-9 in October 2018. Leuchter says he is afraid the chair will malfunction