The Tennessee Supreme Court has directed that four men be executed by the end of this year, marking the reinstatement of the state’s death penalty after a five-year hiatus.
The court has recently issued four orders, resetting the execution dates for four men who were granted reprieves in 2022. This came after Governor Bill Lee initiated an independent review of the state’s lethal injection protocols. The individuals who are now scheduled to be executed in the death chamber at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville are as follows:
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- Oscar Smith, May 22
- Byron Black, August 5
- Donald Middlebrooks, September 24
- Harold Nichols, December 11
Tennessee has joined the ranks of seven other states that have set plans in motion to carry out the execution of death row inmates this year.
The review that followed discovered that state officials had consistently neglected to adhere to their own procedures and had carried out executions without adequately testing the drugs. In December, the Tennessee Department of Correction declared that they had completed the development of a new protocol for administering a single drug, specifically the barbiturate pentobarbital.
Supervising Assistant Federal Public Defender Kelley Henry expressed strong opposition to the process that resulted in the announcement of new execution dates.
According to an email statement, Oscar Smith was just half an hour away from being executed when the process was halted. This was due to the revelation that officials from the Tennessee Department of Corrections (TDOC) and the supplier of the lethal injection drug had been consistently providing false information to the courts, the public, and the individuals involved in the case. The attorney representing Smith expressed her concerns about the lack of transparency and detail in the newly adopted execution protocol, stating that the state had been working on it secretly.
All the men on Death Row since the 1980s, who have been given new execution dates, now have the option to choose between lethal injection or the electric chair. This choice is available to them because they were convicted before the state of [insert state name] adopted lethal injection as its official method of execution.
Smith received the death penalty from a Nashville jury after being found guilty of the 1989 murders of his estranged wife, Judy Smith, and her two sons, Chad and Jason Burnett. Despite his continuous claims of innocence, Smith’s attorneys argued in a 2019 court filing that his conviction was flawed, stating that it was “based on an impossible prosecution theory that contradicts the physical evidence.”
Black was condemned to death in Nashville in 1989 for the killings of Angela Clay and her two daughters, Latoya and Lakeisha. Attorneys for Black have asserted that a “sham” trial led to his conviction and that he lacks the mental capacity to face execution. They claim he has an IQ of 67, cerebral damage, and schizophrenia. They also stated that Black suffers from a variety of medical conditions, including congestive heart failure and a degenerative joint disease in his hip that has rendered him nearly unable to walk.
Middlebrooks was sentenced to death in Nashville for torturing and killing Kerrick Majors in 1987. His lawyers have contended that he is also mentally unable to be executed, citing horrific physical and sexual abuse as a child, including rape by his mother. According to a 2019 court filing, Middlebrooks “suffers from a well-documented constellation of serious, debilitating psychiatric and medical diseases.”
Nichols was condemned to death in Chattanooga for raping and murdering Karen Pulley, 21, in 1988. He confessed to multiple additional rapes in the vicinity after his arrest. Court filings show that Nichols was physically and sexually abused as a child. In 2018, Chattanooga’s district attorney agreed to a deal that would have resulted in Nichols being resentenced to life in prison, but a judge rejected the proposal.