Condemned man’s last words: ‘Let’s rock’
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – A Tennessee inmate’s final words were “Let’s rock” before he became the first man executed in the electric chair since 2007 in Tennessee.
A reporter who witnessed the execution says 63-year-old iunmate Edmund Zagorski mostly looked ahead but did look around the death chamber at a Nashville prison in the minutes before his death. When asked if he had any last words, he said, “Let’s rock.”
The eyewitness says he grimaced as a sponge was put over his head. The witnesss says the inmate raised up in his chair when each jolt of electricity went through him.
In opting for the electric chair over a lethal injection as Tennessee allowed him, Zagorski had argued it would be a quicker and less painful way to die. He became only the second person to die in the electric chair in Tennessee since 1960.
Nationwide, only 14 other people have been put to death in the electric chair since 2000, including a Virginia inmate in 2013.
Prosecutors say Zagorski shot John Dotson and Jimmy Porter and slit their throats in April 1983 after robbing them during a drug deal.
