Tennessee death row inmate Harold Wayne Nichols on Monday declined to choose between the electric chair and lethal injection for his December 11th execution for the 1988 rape and murder of 21 year-old Chattanooga State University student Karen Pulley, the Associated Press reports.
The precise reason for Nichols’s refusal to participate in the penal system’s procedure that allowed him to select between the two methods offered was not made public, however it’s possible that it may be a personal objection to being executed, that selecting one of the options may have been seen as assent to having the punishment meted out for his crimes. Some may take the speculation even further and posit that a non-submittal of preference on his execution method could constitute an “opt-out” of the system, as though he were voting and simply left his ballot blank without selecting a candidate in a contested election, thus registering his protest over being presented with only bad choices. Since in that instance Nichols’s “vote” would be recorded but not counted, the same logic should apply to the execution method selection process: a null value has null effect.
It’s certainly a fascinating topic for legal scholars to ponder, not to mention Nichols himself, who will have 30 days to mull it over before he’s executed by lethal injection on December 11th, 2025.