The next man scheduled for execution in Tennessee — Harold Wayne Nichols — has officially declined to choose a method of execution. He had two options: lethal injection or the electric chair.

With no formal decision from Nichols, the default is lethal injection.

It’s become common for death row inmates to opt out of that choice. That’s because there are complicated strings attached, due to a niche U.S. Supreme Court case.

In 2000, the court decided that an Arizona man lost his right to challenge whether the state’s lethal gassing protocol was constitutional because he’d opted for the gas in the first place. Now, it’s understood that when a death row inmate chooses their method of execution, they lose their right to challenge its constitutionality.

Challenges to execution methods tend t

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