Deborah Denno was quoted in a Vox article about Tennessee death row inmates requesting electrocution over lethal injection as the form of their execution.
David Earl Miller will face the death penalty in Tennessee today, and like a growing number of inmates, he’s asking for electrocution over lethal injection.
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“It’s a little bit surprising to me that they’d prefer electrocution,” said Deborah Denno, a death penalty expert and professor at Fordham University. “I really see that as a huge statement against lethal injection because electrocution has had its own problems.”
Lethal injection was first enacted in the United States in 1977, but it wasn’t put to use on death row inmates until 1982. According to Denno, lethal injection protocol has been “consistently problematic” since its onset and has only gotten worse in terms of accounting for failed executions over the years.