Edmund Zagorski argued it was unconstitutional to force him to choose electric chair or lethal injection

Edmund Zagorski, a convicted double murderer, was put to death in the electric chair on Thursday night in a prison in Nashville, Tennessee, marking the first use of the controversial execution method in the US since 2013.

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Zagorski’s death came minutes after the US supreme court declined to step in and prevent the execution going ahead. The 63-year-old prisoner had petitioned the court arguing that it was unconstitutional for him to be forced to choose between the electric chair and lethal injection.

The Tennessee department of corrections put out a statement saying that the inmate had been put to death at Riverbend maximum security institution in Nashville. He was pronounced dead at 7.26pm local time.

According to reporters on the scene, his last words had been: “Let’s rock.”

Since 2000, only 14 death row inmates have been executed in the electric chair. The most recent was Robert Gleason in Virginia in January 2013.

The technique has had a controversial history. Two states have banned its use: Georgia, on grounds that it could cause excruciating pain and Nebraska after the smell of burning flesh was noted by witnesses.

The device also has a controversial back story in Tennessee. An investigation by BuzzFeed News found that the person who installed the chair in the state’s death chamber in 1985, Fred Leuchter, was later charged with fraud for practicing as an engineer without a license.

Zagorksi had asked the authorities in Tennessee to allow him to die in the chair, but not willingly so. He said he had only opted for that method because the prevailing option – death by triple lethal injection – was even more unconscionable.

His case to the US supreme court argued that to have to decide between two inhumane techniques for killing him was unconstitutional. In the end, his attorney said Zagorski chose the chair thinking it would be quicker and less painful alternative.

Supreme court justice Sonia Sotomayor, a frequent critic of the death penalty, gave a dissenting opinion. She wrote of Zagorski that he chose the electric chair “not because he thought that it was a humane way to die, but because he thought that the three-drug cocktail that Tennessee had planned to use was even worse. Given what most people think of the electric chair, it’s hard to imagine a more striking testament – from a person with more at stake – to the legitimate fears raised by the lethal-injection drugs that Tennessee uses.”

Zagorski was sentenced in 1984 for murdering two men the previous year during a drug deal. His death rendered him only the second person put to death by electrocution in Tennessee since 1960, following Daryl Holton who chose to die in the electric chair in 2007.

Zagorski chose the chair after his legal challenge to Tennessee’s midazolam-based lethal injection protocol failed. His attorneys say he believes death by electrocution will be quicker, but he maintains that both methods are unconstitutional.

﻿Zagorski’s last meal, according to state authorities, was pickled pig knuckles and pig tails. In Tennessee, death row inmates are allowed $20 for a special meal before they are executed.