A convicted murderer who avoided the electric chair was electrocuted accidentally while sitting on a steel toilet in his cell, prison officials said.

Michael Anderson Godwin, 28, apparently was trying to fix a pair of earphones connected to his television set Sunday when he bit into a wire and was electrocuted in his cell at the Central Correctional Institution, officials said.

Godwin was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison in 1983. An earlier verdict that would have sent Godwin to the electric chair had been overturned on appeal.