A Tennessee inmate became the second person to die in the
state's electric chair in just over a month on December 6, 2018, nearly two decades after
Tennessee adopted lethal injection as its preferred method of execution, reported The Associated Press.
David Earl Miller, 61, was pronounced dead at 7:25 p.m. at a
Nashville maximum-security prison.
Miller was convicted of killing 23-year-old Lee Standifer in
1981 in Knoxville and had been on death row for 36 years, the longest of any
inmate in Tennessee.
At 7:12 p.m. and after Miller had been strapped into the
chair, Tennessee Department of Correction officials raised a blind that had
covered the windows to a witness room. Miller looked straight ahead, his eyes
seemingly unfocused and his face expressionless.
Warden Tony Mays asked Miller if he had any last words. He
spoke but his words were unintelligible. Mays asked him to repeat himself, and
his words were still difficult to understand, but his attorney, Stephen
Kissinger, said he understood them to be, "Beats being on death row."
Officers then placed a large damp sponge on Miller's shaved
head to help conduct the current before strapping a cap to his head. Water ran
down Miller's face and was toweled off by an officer. Miller looked down and
did not look back up before officers placed a shroud over his face.
After someone connected an electrical cable to the chair,
Miller's body stiffened as the first jolt of current hit him. His body then
relaxed before a second jolt came less than a minute later. Again, Miller's
body stiffened and then relaxed. The blinds were pulled down and an
announcement of the time of death came over an intercom.
No witnesses from either Miller's family or Standifer's were
present for the execution, but Department of Correction spokeswoman Neysa
Taylor read a brief statement from a woman from Ohio who did not want her name
given.
Taylor read, "After a long line of victims he has left,
it is time to be done. It is time for him to pay for what he has done to
Lee."
Miller had been on a date with Standifer, who had mental
disabilities, and the two were seen together around town the evening of May 20,
1981. The young woman's body was found beaten and stabbed the next day in the
yard of the home where Miller had been living.
Gov. Bill Haslam refused Miller's
request to commute his sentence to life in prison. Miller's petition for
clemency said Miller had been physically abused as a child by his stepfather
and had been physically and sexually abused by his mother. The petition argued
that evidence of the trauma and mental illness it caused should have been
presented to a jury.
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