Would you kill a person for 50 bucks? How about $50 and a day off work?

Video: Word On The Street (10/15/07)

Well, that was the pay some years back for a state prison guard to pull the electric chair switch to send an inmate to his death.

The executioner for some of the legal deaths was a guard who was called "Dirty Shirt," and, according to retired prison hospital superintendent Billy Smith, “Dirty Shirt” seemed to enjoy the job, but not Smith himself.

"I had no problem being there and doing what I had to do during an execution, but I wouldn't pull the switch,” Smith explained.

Convicted killer Daryl Holton chose the electric chair over lethal injection for his execution last month. It was the first time the chair had been used in 47 years.

For Holton's execution, a lot of changes to the operation of the heavy oak chair had to be made.

And it's no longer a switch used to send the current through the condemned man's body, it’s a button.

It's still a prison employee, but the pay has been increased to $850.

Whether the state's electric chair or lethal injection will ever be used again in Tennessee is up in the air.

The Tennessee General Assembly has commissioned a study committee to seriously examine capital punishment in the state.

The results could be good news for the 98 inmates now on Riverbend State Prison's death row.