Tennessee has put a 53-year-old blind inmate to death in the electric chair for his conviction in the 1991 killing of his estranged girlfriend.

The execution of Lee Hall was only the second of a blind inmate in the US since the nation’s reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976.

Prison officials say Hall was pronounced dead at 7.26pm on Thursday at a Nashville prison.

He chose the electric chair over Tennessee’s preferred execution method of lethal injection.

Hall was convicted of killing Traci Crozier by setting her on fire in her car.

He had his sight upon entering prison, but lawyers say he become functionally blind from improperly treated glaucoma.