Once more than a month passes from Edmund Zagorski's Nov. 1 execution, another death row inmate convicted in a South Knoxville murder will be put to death.
David Earl Miller is Tennessee's longest standing death row inmate. He was convicted of the 1981 murder of a mentally-handicapped woman in South Knoxville.
Miller is scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection in December.
Lisa Skinner, then Lisa Hood, was the first journalist on the scene the night of the murder.
“We were in an unmarked car so we kept our distance and when we got there," she said. "There were several police vehicles already there and they had already found the girl.”
Skinner says over 35 years later, her memories of that night remain clear. She was assigned a story due the following morning, and she remembers the difficulty involved keeping emotions out of the story.
“Before I became a journalist, I worked at a special needs camp as a counselor in summers, so it always enrages me when I hear about someone being preyed upon," Skinner said.
Miller was one of Tennessee's death row inmates whose attorneys filed a federal lawsuit claiming a firing squad is more humane than the state's current lethal injection practices. Once his execution comes to pass, Skinner hopes the family of Lee Standifer, the woman he murdered, will find peace and closure.
"I hope the family feels relief that justice has been served," she said. "I hope the family remembers their good times with their daughter and that a chapter has been closed.”