In an unprecedented move, Tennessee decided to bring back the electric chair without allowing prisoner choice after a landslide election

By Tamara El

In the event that drugs cannot be found for lethal injections in Tennessee, death row inmates have now been approved to be electrocuted for capital punishment.

“There are no states that allow inmates to choose, but it is a very different matter for a state to impose a method like electrocution. No other state has gone so far”, said Richard Deiter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. This will be the first state to reinstate the electric chair without giving prisoners the option. Interestingly, states are finding themselves running out of the drugs used in lethal injections, due to shortages from a European-led boycott of selling the drugs to prisons.

Tennessee lawmakers overwhelmingly passed the legislation in April, with Senate voting 23-3 and the House 68-13 in favor of the bill. Governor of Tennessee Richard Haslam (R) signed the bill into law. Thursday according to the Associated Press. In a recent interview, state Republican Senator Kenneth Yager stated he was a main sponsor of the bill and supported it due to concerns the state could find itself in a position without the required chemicals to carry out sentences.

Inmates who committed crimes before 1999 had the choice of whether they wanted to die by electric chair or lethal injection in previous Tennessee legislation. The last inmate executed by electrocution was Daryl Holton, a Gulf War vet who killed his three sons and a stepdaughter with a high-powered rifle in their garage in 1997. Darryl requested the electric chair in 2007. Richard Dexter expects that if electric chair executions are chosen, legal action will most likely be sought by inmates.

-Tamara El(@MwiliHakalu)