Tennessee exe­cut­ed David Earl Miller (pic­tured at age 24) in the state’s elec­tric chair on December 6, 2018, after Governor Bill Haslam denied his appli­ca­tion for clemen­cy and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to address the denials of his chal­lenges to the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of Tennessee’s exe­cu­tion meth­ods. Miller, a 61-year-old man with a sig­nif­i­cant his­to­ry of men­tal ill­ness who expe­ri­enced exten­sive sex­u­al and phys­i­cal abuse as a child, opt­ed to be exe­cut­ed by elec­tric chair after the Tennessee Supreme Court denied oth­er pris­on­ers’ chal­lenges to a three-drug lethal-injec­tion process that Miller and his lawyers believed would result in an extend­ed torturous death.

The Tennessee pris­on­ers chal­lenged the state’s three-drug lethal-injec­tion process, seek­ing to replace it with exe­cu­tion with a sin­gle bar­bi­tu­rate, pen­to­bar­bi­tal. Miller pre­sent­ed evi­dence that the three-drug pro­to­col would result in approx­i­mate­ly 18 min­utes of unnec­es­sary pain and suf­fer­ing. He sub­mit­ted an affi­davit from one of the nation’s lead­ing anes­the­si­ol­o­gists that Billy Ray Irick ​“was aware and sen­sate” dur­ing his lethal-injec­tion exe­cu­tion on October 11, 2018 ​“and would have expe­ri­enced the feel­ing of chok­ing, drown­ing in his own flu­ids, suf­fo­cat­ing, being buried alive, and the burn­ing sen­sa­tion caused by the injec­tion of the potas­si­um chlo­ride.” The pris­on­ers’ chal­lenge was reject­ed because Miller — pre­vent­ed from obtain­ing crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion by Tennessee’s exe­cu­tion secre­cy law — was unable to show that pen­to­bar­bi­tal was read­i­ly avail­able to the state. Miller elect­ed to be exe­cut­ed in the elec­tric chair, but argued that his choice of elec­tro­cu­tion instead of lethal injec­tion was coerced and that both meth­ods were uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly cru­el and unusu­al. The low­er courts ruled that Miller had waived his chal­lenge to con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the elec­tric chair by choos­ing it over lethal injec­tion, and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to inter­vene. In dis­sent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that ​“elec­tro­cu­tion can be a dread­ful way to die,” but there was ​“cred­i­ble sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence that lethal injec­tion as cur­rent­ly prac­ticed in Tennessee may well be even worse.” It was ​“per­verse,” she said, to require pris­on­ers to prove that an alter­na­tive method was avail­able to kill them. ​“Such mad­ness should not continue.”

Miller was charged with mur­der­ing his intel­lec­tu­al­ly-dis­abled girl­friend, Lee Standifer, in May 1981. He was 24 years old at the time. Miller’s attor­neys sub­mit­ted an 89-page clemen­cy peti­tion to Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam detail­ing Miller’s upbring­ing and child­hood abuse, includ­ing an instance in which Miller’s step­fa­ther ​“knocked [Miller] out of a chair, hit him with a board, threw him into a refrig­er­a­tor with such force it dent­ed the refrig­er­a­tor and blood­ied [Miller’s] head, dragged him through the house by his hair, and twice ran [Miller’s] head through the wall.” Miller’s moth­er, who drank heav­i­ly while he was in utero, sex­u­al­ly abused Miller and forced him to have sex with her on at least three occa­sions. The doc­u­ment also not­ed that Miller attempt­ed sui­cide two times before age ten. Governor Haslam denied the peti­tion with a one-sen­tence state­ment: ​“After care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion of David Earl Miller’s clemen­cy request, I am declin­ing to inter­vene in this case.”

Following the exe­cu­tion, Miller’s lawyer Steve Kissinger said: ​“If any of you have been read­ing what we’ve been sub­mit­ting to the gov­er­nor, what we have been send­ing to the courts for the last 20 years you’ll know that he cared deeply for Lee Standifer and she would be alive today if it weren’t for a sadis­tic step­fa­ther and a moth­er who vio­lat­ed every trust that a son should have. I came up here promis­ing to tell you what we did here today, but I think maybe what I should be doing is ask you all that ques­tion. What is it that we did here today?”

Miller is the sec­ond death-row pris­on­er to be exe­cut­ed by elec­tro­cu­tion in Tennessee this year. Edmund Zagorski, exe­cut­ed by elec­tro­cu­tion on November 1, 2018, was the first. Miller’s last words were ​“beats being on death row.”

(Steven Hale, Tennessee Executes David Earl Miller for 1983 Murder, Nashville Scene, December 6, 2018; Steven Hale, With the Electric Chair Awaiting Him, David Miller Asks for Mercy, Nashville Scene, December 4, 2018; ​‘Beats being on death row’: Death row inmate David Earl Miller exe­cut­ed, Associated Press, December 7, 2018; Jordan S. Rubin, Another Electric Chair Execution Proceeds Over Sotomayor Dissent, Bloomberg Law, December 7, 2018.) Read Miller’s clemen­cy appli­ca­tion and Justice Sotomayor’s dis­sent in Miller v. Parker, No. 18 – 6906 (U.S. Dec. 6, 2018). See Executions and Lethal Injection.

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