TN announces new execution method that could allow state to resume executions after last one halted in 2022

Tennessee officials announced Friday a new method that could allow the state to resume executions after the last scheduled execution was abruptly halted in the spring of 2022, although executions will not resume immediately.

This comes two and a half years after the state abruptly halted the execution of inmate Oscar Smith and admitted that correction officials were not following their own execution protocols, according to The Associated Press.

Smith, now 74, was scheduled to be executed for the 1989 killings of his estranged wife and her teenage sons before it was called off.

The Tennessee Department of Correction announced Friday it had “completed its revision of the lethal injection protocol, which will utilize the single drug pentobarbital.”

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Details about the new protocol were not made publicly available.

Kelley Henry, chief of the federal public defender’s habeas unit that represents many of the state’s death row inmates, said the announcement was “notable for its lack of detail.”

“The secrecy which shrouds the execution protocol in Tennessee is what allowed TDOC to perform executions in violation of their own protocol while simultaneously misrepresenting their actions to the courts and the public,” Henry told The Associated Press.

The decision to give Smith a reprieve from execution at the last moment came after Henry asked for the results of required purity and potency tests for the lethal injection drugs that were slated to be used to put him to death.

Documents later showed that at least two people were aware that the lethal injection drugs the state intended to use had not been through some required testing. An independent review then revealed the state had not complied with its own lethal injection process ever since it was revised in 2018.

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Department of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada took over in January 2023, the same month its top attorney and inspector general were terminated.

“I am confident the lethal injection process can proceed in compliance with departmental policy and state laws,” Strada said Friday.

Henry said death row inmates have an ongoing federal lawsuit challenging Tennessee’s previous lethal injection protocol, which used three different drugs in series.

The plaintiffs put the case on hold pending the state’s review and revision of the procedure. The inmates’ agreement with the state gives them 90 days to review the new protocol and determine whether to amend their complaint.

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Henry requested that no new execution dates be set while the court case continues.

She also highlighted that the U.S. Department of Justice is currently reviewing the use of pentobarbital in its executions.

“We know from the scientific data that single drug pentobarbital results in pulmonary edema which has been likened to waterboarding,” she said.