Tennessee death row inmate Lee Hall will be chowing down a Philly cheesesteak before he is scheduled to be put to death Thursday, according to new reports.
Hall, 53, has also selected two orders of onion rings, a slice of cheesecake and a Pepsi as part of his last meal before he faces the electric chair, The Tennessean reported.
The meal will be delivered to him — as death row inmates typically get $20 toward a special meal before their execution, the Tennessee Department of Correction told the paper.
Since Tuesday, Hall has been moved out of his death row cell and into another next to the execution chamber during a three-day “death watch” period, according to the report.
Hall, who has elected to be executed by electrocution, is among a list of inmates who filed a suit against the state of Tennessee, claiming that its method of lethal injection is unconstitutional.
He was allowed to select the method since the crime happened before 1999.
Hall, who at the time went by Leroy Hall, Jr., has been sentenced to death in connection to the 1991 slaying of his ex-girlfriend Traci Cozier, according to The Tennessean.
He has been convicted of throwing gasoline over Cozier while she sat in the front seat of her car, lighting her on fire. More than 95 percent of the woman’s body was burned, and she died more than a day later without ever losing consciousness, according to the report.
If Hall’s execution happens as scheduled, he will be only the second blind person executed in the US since it was reinstated in 1976, the Washington Post reported.
His lawyers have cited his disability in a bid to have his sentence commuted.
“Lee Hall is blind and vulnerable,” attorney Kathleen G. Morris wrote in a March 2018 filing in the Supreme Court of Tennessee, obtained by the paper. “If confined to prison for the remainder of his natural life, Mr. Hall bears no practical risk of harm to anyone. The spectacle of his execution — guiding him to the gurney — would ‘offend humanity.’”
The Supreme Court declined to intervene, and on Wednesday, neither did the state’s Republican governor, Bill Lee.
“The justice system has extensively reviewed Lee Hall’s case over the course of almost 30 years, including additional review and rulings by the Tennessee Supreme Court yesterday and today,” Lee said in a statement. “The judgment and sentence stand based on these rulings, and I will not intervene in this case.”
The only other known blind person executed by the death penalty in the modern era was Clarence Ray Allen, 76, back in 2006, according to the Washington Post.
He was legally blind, used a wheelchair and suffered a heart attack months before his scheduled execution. He had pleaded with authorities to allow him to die if he had another — but they refused, saying he would be resuscitated and then executed as planned. He was put to death by lethal injection.
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