Tennessee Inmates Claim Electric Chair Unconstitutional
/Tennessee's plan to use the electric chair as a backup to lethal injection is unconstitutional, Death Row inmates claimed Friday in an amended complaint.
Stephen Michael West and four other Death Row inmates sued Tennessee in November, claiming execution by electric chair violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.
Since the original lawsuit was filed, botched executions by lethal injection in Oklahoma and Arizona made world headlines, and inmates and capital punishment critics have filed lawsuits against states, demanding to know where they get their lethal drugs. States have resisted, and drug companies have become reluctant to supply the lethal drugs.
Tennessee's Capital Punishment Enforcement Act, which took effect July 1, dictates that a death sentence will be carried out by electrocution if one or more lethal injection chemicals are "unavailable."
