TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Kate Prince on Jan 23, 2020

Nicholas Todd Sutton has chosen to die by electric chair for his Feb. 20 execution, the Tennessean reports. If his execution goes forward as scheduled, Sutton will be the fifth death row inmate to choose the electric chair in Tennessee since 2018. The choice to die by electrocution stems from a battle over Tennessee’s lethal injection drugs, which other inmates have described as state-sanctioned torture. Inmates who received a death sentence for a crime committed prior to 1999 are allowed by state law to choose between electrocution and the default execution method of lethal injection. Sutton was sentenced to death for the killing of a fellow inmate in 1985 and had previously been convicted in three other murders.