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Tennessee Death row inmate Harold Wayne Nichols refused to choose between the electric chair and lethal injection for his Dec. 11 execution on Monday, meaning the state will default to lethal injection.
Nichols was sentenced to death in 1990 after being convicted of the rape and murder of 21-year-old student Karen Pulley. Chattanooga State University, two years ago. Tennessee Department of Corrections spokeswoman Dorinda Carter said in an email that they have two weeks to change their mind about what method will be used.
He was scheduled to be executed in 2020, and had chosen the electric chair, but was then reprieved due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Tennessee prisoners who were convicted of crimes before January 1999 are allowed to choose electrocution instead of the state’s preferred method of lethal injection. Although many states still allow the use of the electric chair, it has been used only five times in the past decade, all in Tennessee.
At the time Nichols chose electrocution, Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol used three different drugs in series. It was a process that the prisoners’ lawyers claimed was fraught with problems. Their concerns appeared to have merit in 2022, when Governor Bill Lee postponed executions, including a second execution date for Nichols. An independent review of the state’s lethal injection process found that none of the drugs prepared for seven inmates executed in Tennessee since 2018 were properly tested.
The Department of Corrections released a new execution protocol last December that uses the single drug pentobarbital. Lawyers for several death row inmates have filed suit over the new protocols, but a hearing in that case is not scheduled until April.
Nichols confessed to the rape and murder of Pulley, as well as several other rapes in the Chattanooga area. Although he expressed remorse at the trial, he acknowledged that he would have continued his violent behavior if he had not been arrested.