Tennessee said that it would bring back the electric chair on Thursday, following the passage of a bill in April that made it through the state congress by a wide margin. In doing so, Tennessee became the first state in the union to bring back the chair without giving inmates condemned to die the option of how they’re going to be executed.
Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam could not be reached for comment on Thursday, when he signed the bill that had breezed through the Tennessee State Legislature. The announcement is a sweeping one that’s likely to generate legal challenges against it, according to Richard Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center:
There are states that allow inmates to choose, but it is a very different matter for a state to impose a method like electrocution. No other state has gone so far.
The bill comes amidst growing shortages of the drugs that are used in legal injections, and on the heels of the recently botched execution in Oklahoma. The botched Oklahoma execution in particular led to President Barack Obama ordering the Justice Department to investigate how executions are carried in the country.
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