Tennessee Executes Inmate for 1988 Student Murder

Harold Wayne Nichols, a 64-year-old Tennessee death row inmate, was executed by lethal injection on Thursday morning at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville for the 1988 rape and murder of 20-year-old Chattanooga State University student Karen Pulley.

Nichols was pronounced dead at 10:39 a.m. after receiving a single dose of pentobarbital under Tennessee's revised execution protocol. In his final statement, he expressed remorse, saying, "To the people I've harmed, I'm sorry. To my family, know that I love you. I know where I'm going. I'm ready to go home," according to the Tennessee Department of Correction. Moments before the lethal injection, Nichols prayed and cried with his spiritual adviser, J.R. Davis, who recited the 23rd Psalm and the Lord's Prayer. Davis told him, "Go in peace, my friend. I love you." Witnesses described Nichols strapped to a gurney with a sheet covering him to his waist and an IV in his elbow. He took a heavy breath, followed by short, snorting breaths, his face turning red and then purple before his breathing stopped.

The execution stemmed from a brutal crime on September 30, 1988, when Nichols broke into Pulley's Chattanooga home...