SHELBYVILLE, TN - A Shelbyville man who is scheduled to be executed on Sept. 19 has asked to die by electric chair, raising the possibility that the state could carry out its first electrocution death in 46 years.

Daryl Keith Holton, a Gulf War veteran who shot his three sons and their sister in 1997, could have chosen death by lethal injection.

But under Tennessee law, death-row inmates can choose between the electric chair and lethal injection if their crimes were committed before 1999, said David Raybin, a Nashville attorney and legal scholar who wrote the state's death penalty statute.

The inmates were allowed that option when the state adopted lethal injection as the method of execution to avoid any appeals of the process.

"What they did was say, 'You could have your choice,' and then there wouldn't be any way they could challenge the method of execution, since they had the power to decide themselves," Raybin said.

Last week Holton checked electric chair as his preferred way to die, Dorinda Carter, spokeswoman for the Department of Correction, said.

The state will be able to use the device, she said..Read more.

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