Harold Wayne Nichols, who has two weeks to decide how the state will kill him, is suing because he says the Tennessee Department of Correction has withheld important information about the lethal injection drugs it may use to execute him.
Nichols, 64, was sentenced to death for the 1988 rape and murder of 21-year-old Karen Pulley in Chattanooga. Nichols pleaded guilty to the charges in 1990. He pleaded guilty to two other rape and burglary charges and was convicted at trial of two other separate rape and burglary charges.
Nichols’ attorneys at the Federal Defenders Service of Eastern Tennessee (FDSET) filed the lawsuit in Knox County Chancery Court. The petition for access to the records was brought by FDSET investigator Megan Kerrigan, whose records requests to TDOC were denied…