Murderer left to go blind on death row by prison guards chooses to be executed by electric chair

A MURDERER who was left to go blind on death row has chosen to be executed by electric chair, according to reports.

Lee Hall is scheduled to die on Thursday in Tennessee – 28 years after he set fire to his estranged girlfriend Traci Crozier.

Hall, 53, still had his eyesight when he stuffed a paper towel in a container full of gas, lit the makeshift fuse and tossed it onto Traci as she sat in her car in Chattanooga.

Traci, who reportedly left Hall after he’d become physically abusive, suffered severe burns and died the next day in hospital.

The soles of her feet were the only part of her body not burned, according to court reports.

Her younger sister, Staci Crozier Wooten, sat by her side for hours in the hospital room.

She told the timesfreepress in 2014: “She felt every bit of it. She was awake for 36 hours. That’s what really bothers me. She knew she was going to die.”

Staci also previously said she hoped Hall would be completely blind for his execution.

“So that when that juice is going in his arm, he won’t even know when it is going to hit,” she said. “And he has to suffer while he sits there and wonders. The longer, the better. Traci had to suffer, and now he needs to suffer.”

Hall’s attorneys say he’s become “functionally blind” due to “improperly treated glaucoma”.

They say the Department of Correction has failed to comply with medical recommendations to prevent further damage.

Hall has opted to die by the electric chair rather than lethal injection.

‘Functionally blind’

Since Tennessee resumed executions in August 2018, three of the five prisoners put to death have chosen the electric chair.

In Tennessee, the state’s primary execution method is lethal injection, but inmates who were convicted of crimes before January 1999 can choose electrocution.

Hall’s lawyers say he’ll be just the second blind person to be executed in the US since 1976.

They say the last blind person executed was Clarence Ray Allen, who died via lethal injection in 2006 in California. Along with being unable to see, Allen was also a wheelchair-user and nearly deaf.

But just days before Hall’s execution, Hall’s attorneys are asking Gov. Bill Lee for a reprieve to allow more time to consider questions about the possible bias of a juror who helped deliver the original death sentence.

“Juror A was not a fair and impartial juror,” the lawyers wrote. “Her presence on Lee Hall’s jury is a structural error in the judicial process requiring automatic reversal.”

Lee is reviewing the request. He has previously sidestepped questions about Tennessee executing a blind person, saying he did not know enough details about the case, according to reports.