Court Upholds Executed Prisoner's Religious Objection To Autopsy

In Nashville on Wednesday, a Davidson County, Tennessee, judge ruled that the state must honor the request of executed prisoner Cecil Johnson that no autopsy be performed on his body. According to yesterday's Tennessean, Chancellor Russell T. Perkins ruled that the state had not presented a compelling reason to reject the strong religious objections to an autopsy that Johnson expressed in a letter to the court before his execution by lethal injection. Johnson's wife promised to waive any right to sue the state over the method of execution if the state would forgo the autopsy.