Tennessee death row inmate declines to choose between the electric chair and lethal injection

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee death row inmate Harold Wayne Nichols on Monday declined to choose between the electric chair and lethal injection for his Dec. 11 execution, meaning the state will default to lethal injection.

Nichols was sentenced to death in 1990 after he was convicted of raping and murdering Karen Pulley, a 21-year-old student at Chattanooga State University, two years earlier. He has two weeks to change his mind about choosing which method will be used, Tennessee Department of Correction spokesperson Dorinda Carter said in an email.

He was scheduled to be executed in 2020, and had chosen the electric chair, but was then given a reprieve due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Tennessee inmates who were convicted of crimes before January 1999 are permitted to choose electrocution over the state's preferred method of lethal injection. Although several states still permit the use of the electric chair, it has only been used five times in the past decade, all in Tennessee.

At the time that Nichols selected electrocution, Tennessee's lethal injection protocol used three different drugs in series. It was a process that inmates' attorneys claimed was riddled with problems. Their concerns were shown to have merit in 2022, when Gov. Bill Lee paused 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 the seven inmates executed in Tennessee since 2018 had been properly tested.

The Correction Department issued a new execution protocol in last December that utilizes the single drug pentobarbital. Attorneys for several death row inmates have sued over the new protocol, but a trial in that case is not scheduled until April.

Nichols confessed to raping and murdering Pulley as well as several other rapes in the Chattanooga area. Although he expressed remorse at trial, he admitted that he would have continued his violent behavior had he not been arrested.