Phillip Workman was executed by lethal injection early Wednesday morning after the U.S. Supreme Court on late Tuesday declined to intervene.
Workman, 53, was pronounced dead at a state prison in Nashville at 1:38 a.m.
He is the third person put to death in Tennessee since 1960.
The execution was put back on after the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday struck down a temporary restraining order issued by a federal judge in Nashville.
Workman had long been on death row for the 1981 slaying of a Memphis police officer.
The Sixth Circuit ruling came in a 2-to-1 decision.
Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton noted that Workman has come within days of being executed five times before and had never raised issues about the method of execution.