Gov. Bill Haslam says he won't intervene in next week's scheduled lethal injection of a Tennessee inmate sentenced in 1984 in the slayings of two men during a drug deal.
In a statement Friday, Haslam said that while Edmund Zagorski has behaved in prison, that doesn't undo how he "robbed and brutally murdered two men and attempted to kill a police officer while on the run."
Zagorski is scheduled to die Thursday.
Haslam says Zagorski pointed to affidavits from nearly 35 years after trial with some jurors preferring a life sentence without parole. Haslam said state law didn't allow that then and the state Supreme Court has ruled its addition as an option doesn't affect previous verdicts.
Attorneys for 32 death row inmates have asked Tennessee's Supreme Court to declare the lethal injection protocol unconstitutional.
