A convicted murderer who committed rape and murder 35 years ago has opted not to select between the electric chair and lethal injection for his upcoming execution. Harold Wayne Nichols will receive a lethal injection next month, the standard method on death row in Tennessee, more than three decades following his sentencing. He has a two-week window to change his decision on the execution method. Initially, in 2020 when his execution was first planned, Nichols had chosen the electric chair.
Nichols would have been the sixth individual executed by electric chair in the US, all in Tennessee, in the last ten years. However, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, his execution was postponed. Last night, Nichols remained undecided on the method for the rescheduled execution scheduled for December 11, as confirmed by a spokesperson for the Tennessee Department of Correction.
Nichols admitted to raping and murdering Karen Pulley, 21, and committing multiple other rapes in the Chattanooga region of Tennessee in the late 1980s. Despite expressing remorse during his trial in 1990, he acknowledged that he would have continued his violent acts if not apprehended.
He received a death sentence in Tennessee, one of the 27 states where capital punishment is legal. In Tennessee, inmates convicted before January 1999 have the choice of electrocution over lethal injection. This option, however, has been rarely utilized, with only five instances recorded in the past decade, all in Tennessee.
At the time Nichols selected electrocution, Tennessee’s lethal injection procedure involved a series of three different drugs, which was criticized by inmates’ lawyers for being flawed. In 2022, Governor Bill Lee halted executions, including Nichols’ second execution date, following an independent review that revealed inadequately tested drugs being used in the lethal injection process. Subsequently, a new execution protocol utilizing pentobarbital as a single drug was introduced by the Correction Department in December.
Despite legal challenges from attorneys representing death row inmates, a trial regarding the new protocol is not slated until April. In a separate incident last month, a man in Florida, Norman Mearle Grim Jr, was executed on death row despite denying charges of rape and murder. Grim Jr received a three-drug injection, becoming Florida’s 15th execution this year.