Barring an 11th-hour stay, 53-year-old inmate Lee Hall is scheduled to die in the electric chair Thursday evening for his conviction in the 1991 burning death of his estranged girlfriend.
NASHVILLE - Tennessee is set to carry out what is expected to be only the second execution of a blind prisoner in the United States since the nation reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
Hall had his sight when he entered death row nearly three decades ago, but his attorneys say he later become functionally blind from improperly treated glaucoma. Earlier this year, Hall chose the electric chair over lethal injection as allowed under state law. His lawyer said it also would be the first electrocution of a blind inmate since the 1976 resumption of US executions. But attorney Kelly Gleason has asked the federal courts to stop Hall from being put to death in the big wooden electric chair believed to have been built with the wood from Tennessee's old gallows.
“Unless the federal courts intervene, Tennessee will become the first state in modern United States history to electrocute a blind man,” Gleason said in a statement Wednesday. “It is a sad day for justice in the state of Tennessee.” Authorities said Hall killed Traci Crozier, 22, on April 17, 1991 by setting her car ablaze with a container of gasoline, stuffing a paper towel over the top, lighting it on fire and tossing it in her vehicle while she was inside. The container exploded and Crozier received burns over more than 90% of her body, dying the next day in the hospital.
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