David Earl Miller Chooses the Electric Chair Over Lethal Injection

In a handwritten note sent to Riverbend Maximum Security Institution Warden Tony Mays, and marked "urgent," Tennessee death row prisoner David Earl Miller waived his right to be executed by lethal injection, choosing the electric chair instead. 

"I waive lethal injection and wish to be electrocution [sic]," he wrote. 

If the execution goes ahead as scheduled on Dec. 6, Miller will be the second man to die in Tennessee's electric chair in as many months. Ed Zagorski was executed for two drug-related murders last month. 

The note from Miller was included in a court filing today from state lawyers.

Miller was convicted and sentenced to death in 1982 for the brutal murder of Lee Standifer, a mentally handicapped woman he'd been dating. But he has a history of severe childhood abuse and mental illness, and one psychiatrist has testified that Miller's "mental diseases and defects were present and acute at the time" of the murder.  

Because he was convicted before 1999, Miller was legally entitled to choose between a lethal injection protocol — which multiple medical experts have argued amounts to torture — and the electric chair. He is one of four Tennessee death row inmates who filed a lawsuit earlier this month asking to be executed by firing squad. The suit has been unsuccessful so far. A federal judge denied a request earlier this month to delay Miller's execution so that the case could be heard.