Adam Tamburin, Mariah Timms and Matt Lakin | Nashville Tennessean

Tennessee executed death row inmate Stephen Michael West Thursday night, marking the third time the state has used the electric chair in less than a year.

He was pronounced dead at 7:27 p.m. CDT, according to the Tennessee Department of Correction. He was 56.

West was sentenced to death for the 1986 stabbing deaths of Wanda Romines, 51, and her 15-year-old daughter, Sheila Romines, in their East Tennessee home. He also was convicted of raping Sheila.

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Tennessee executes Stephen Michael West by electric chair

Investigators say the women had been tortured in front of one another before they died.

Eddie Campbell, a relative of the victims, said their family's grief stretched across decades.

"Our family has suffered very deeply over the past 33 years through all the appeals that we think is very unfair for anyone to have to go through," Campbell said in a statement released after the execution. "I hope that (West) has made peace with God and has truly asked God for forgiveness for such a heinous crime."

West was the 137th person put to death in Tennessee since 1916, and the fifth inmate executed since August 2018.

West gave his final words at 7:15 p.m. He was already strapped into the electric chair, with sponges around his legs.

"In the beginning, God created man," he said before stopping, overcome by sobs. "And Jesus wept. That's all."

Then prison staff removed his black glasses, doused him with salt water and covered his face with a black shroud. At 7:19, West's body stiffened as an electric current coursed through his body. His hands curled into fists, with his right pinkie extended out.

Then he went limp.

Another round of electricity caused his body to tense up again before slumping back.

After that, he didn't move.

Failed appeals to spare West

West's legal team had pleaded to spare his life in the weeks before the execution. They said his co-defendant Ronnie Martin had committed the murders while West stood by, hobbled by a history of childhood abuse and untreated mental illnesses.

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Martin was 17 when the murders took place. He remains in an East Tennessee prison and will be eligible for parole in 2030. Because he was a minor at the time of the crime, Martin was not eligible for the death penalty.

In a clemency application sent to Gov. Bill Lee, West's lawyers said he had reformed himself after receiving mental health treatment in prison. They stressed his Christian faith and his work with other inmates behind bars.

Days before the execution, Lee said he would not intervene. Within hours, West asked to die by electrocution instead of lethal injection, the state's default execution method.

He was the third inmate to make that choice since Tennessee resumed executions a year ago. Each inmate who chose the electric chair had participated in lawsuits challenging Tennessee's lethal injection protocol.

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Tennessee death row inmate Stephen Michael West

In a statement released after the execution, West's lawyers said they were "deeply disappointed that the state of Tennessee has gone forward with the execution of a man whom the state has diagnosed with severe mental illness; a man of deep faith who has made a positive impact on those around him for decades; and a man who by overwhelming evidence did not commit these murders but has nevertheless taken personal responsibility for his involvement in these crimes."

Dozens gathered to protest death penalty

More than 30 people gathered outside Riverbend Maximum Security Institute in Nashville to protest West's execution.

Kevin Riggs, senior pastor at Franklin Community Church, said executing people doesn't change anything. When he talked to West last week, Riggs said he was hopeful the governor would grant clemency.

"You're not executing the same person who did the crime," he said. "We all change. Stephen was remorseful."

Andrew Nelles / The Tennessean

Dan Mann and his wife have visited death row inmates weekly for years. About 7 p.m., as the execution was set to begin, he said this was "one of the most somber vigils I've attended."

"To go and meet with these guys is life changing," he said. "I'm not the same man I was 10 years ago."

The vigil ended with the Lord's Prayer at 7:12 p.m. Then the group sang "Amazing Grace."

Rick Laude, 67, was the sole demonstrator in favor of the death penalty. He said he was there for Wanda and Sheila Romines.

Laude said there are times to show mercy to inmates on death row, but he said the death penalty has been "the law of the land since Tennessee boundary lines were drawn."

'It was a slaughterhouse,' relative of victims recounts

West was born in a mental institution in 1962.

His mother, Wanda West, had tried to kill herself while she was pregnant by breathing in carbon monoxide from a gas oven. He was named by the aunt who came to pick him up.

According to the 28-page clemency petition compiled by his lawyers, his childhood was marred by near-constant physical and emotional abuse at the hands of his parents. The attorneys argued that abuse caused or exacerbated a series of severe mental illnesses, including schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder.

They said those illnesses left him frozen in the face of the carnage on the morning of March 17, 1986, when Wanda and Sheila Romines were stabbed to death.

West and Martin blamed each other for the crime. While the details may never be known, the blood-soaked crime scene suggested horror.

"It was a slaughterhouse," Campbell, the victims' relatives, said in an interview before the execution.

Caitie McMekin/News Sentinel

West and Martin had been drinking beer and roaming around the Big Ridge area early that morning after they clocked out of work at the McDonald's in what's now Rocky Top. West told his pregnant wife he was going fishing.

As they drove around in Martin's mother's car, Martin suggested they go "get some sex."

West was 23, a shift supervisor at McDonald's who'd spent three years in the U.S. Army. Martin was 17, short and curly-headed with a face that made him look even younger. They'd known each other barely two weeks.

The pair met a friend of Martin's around 3 a.m. who loaned Martin a butcher knife. As Jack Romines left his Union County home two hours later, with his wife and daughter still inside, Martin and West walked up to the front door.

No one suspected a thing until Jack Romines came home from work 10 hours later. He came inside and saw his wife's feet on the bed. His daughter was on the floor.

Union County deputies collected 58 bags of evidence from the Romines house. An autopsy by Dr. Cleland Blake, one of East Tennessee's pioneers in forensic medicine, determined mother and daughter had been bound and stabbed dozens of times each — Wanda Romines more than 40 times alone.

Most of the wounds were shallow, apparently meant to inflict pain and terror rather than death. Mother and daughter might have suffered as long as two hours.

Prosecutor William Paul Phillips said it wasn't clear how long the brutal crime lasted.

"We know from the evidence that these crimes were committed on the daughter in front of her mother, on the mother in front of her daughter," Phillips said. "It would have had to take a substantial amount of time. Eventually they bled out."

In his statement after the execution, Campbell said Jack Romines told his family every day for 22 years how much he missed Sheila and Wanda until he died at the age of 69 from a heart attack.

"All the proof in the world was there for the case to be over in 24 hours let alone 33 years," Campbell said.

Martin pleaded guilty after being charged as an adult.

Jurors found West guilty of murder and rape after less than two hours of deliberation. They took even less time to settle on the death sentence — about 90 minutes.

Three decades later, that sentence was carried out, as West died in the execution chamber at Riverbend.

Nolan Ryan and Holly Meyer contributed to this report.