Old Sparky makes a comeback.
Tennessee prison officials on Thursday electrocuted 61-year-old David Earl Miller, the third person executed by the state this year and the longest-serving inmate on Tennessee’s death row.
Miller was pronounced dead at 7:25 p.m. CST.
Miller was sentenced to death for the May 1981 murder of 23-year-old Lee Standifer of Knoxville, who was mentally disabled.
Miller brought her to a pastor’s home where he was staying and struck her across the face with a fire poker.
He hit her with enough force to fracture her skull, burst one of her eye sockets and leave imprints on the bone. He stabbed her over and over — in the neck, in the chest, in the stomach and in the mouth.
The U.S. Supreme Court denied to intervene a little more than one hour before the execution was set to begin at 7 p.m.
The sky above Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville turned dark early with threats of rain later in the evening. Mounted horse patrols circled the prison parking lot as a small number of people on both sides of the death penalty debate stood in the cold.
Media witnesses entered the building and waited in front of a large window that looked into the execution chamber where, on the other side of the glass, Miller sat pinned in the electric chair.
It appeared no one from Standifer’s family came to witness the death.
Miller said his last words but was asked to repeat them.
With “Beats being on death row”, the execution began. […]
At 7:16, there was a first jolt of current and the witnesses could see body stiffen and then relax. His pinkies curled up over the arm rest of the seat.
He didn’t move after that.
Then another jolt lasted 15 seconds.
The doctor overseeing the death checked on Miller’s vitals.
He was dead.