NASHVILLE, Tenn. - As much of the United States debates the use of lethal injections against a backdrop of drug scarcity and botched executions, Tennessee has found an alternative: the electric chair.
The state's Republican governor, Bill Haslam, approved a law Thursday allowing Tennessee to electrocute death row inmates if prisons lack the correct drugs. The drugs have become increasingly difficult to obtain because of a European-led boycott on drug sales for executions.
Tennessee has become the first U.S. state to reintroduce the electric chair as an execution method without giving the doomed prisoner an option, according to Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes executions and tracks the issue.
"There are states that allow inmates to choose. But it is a very different matter for a state to impose a method like electrocution," Dieter said. "No other state has gone so far."
Dieter forecast legal challenges if Tennessee seeks to electrocute a prisoner. He said Tennessee would need to prove it couldn't obtain the appropriate drugs and demonstrate that the electric chair doesn't violate the U.S. Constitution's protections against cruel and unusual punishment.
The Supreme Court has never declared a method of execution unconstitutional. It upheld the firing squad in 1879, the electric chair in 1890 and lethal injection in 2008.
The court has said the Eighth Amendment prohibits inflicting pain merely to torture or punish an inmate, drawing a distinction between electrocution and centuries-old practices such as drawing and quartering.
