NASHVILLE, Tenn. – A Tennessee inmate facing an execution date next month has opted to die by the electric chair.
FILE – Sutton, sentenced to death in 1985 for stabbing fellow inmate Carl Estep after a confrontation over a drug deal, is scheduled to be executed on Feb. 20. (Tennessee Department of Correction via AP)
The choice makes inmate Nicholas Sutton the fifth Tennessee inmate in a little over a year to choose electrocution over the state’s preferred method of lethal injection.
Virginia is the only other state to use the chair this decade and hasn’t done so since 2013.
Tennessee inmates have unsuccessfully argued in court that the way the state carries out lethal injection results in a prolonged and agonizing death.
Sutton was sentenced to death in 1985 for stabbing fellow inmate. A Feb. 20 execution is scheduled.
