22 January 2023 :
Tennessee Gov. Says No Death Warrants Until Execution Protocol Problems Fixed
Tennessee will not resume executions until it fixes systematic problems with the administration of its execution protocol, Governor Bill Lee has announced. “It’s a very important issue that has to be done correctly,” Lee told reporters on January 5, 2023. “And we will take the time to fix the protocol and to make certain that we don’t move forward until everything’s in place.”
Lee, a Republican, halted the execution of Oscar Smith on April 21, 2022 after learning that the Tennessee Department of Corrections (TDOC) had violated the state’s execution protocol by failing to test the drugs it intended to use in the execution for possible contaminants. He then granted reprieves to 4 other prisoners scheduled for execution later in the year and announced that the state had retained former U.S. Attorney Ed Stanton, an appointee of President Barack Obama, to conduct an independent investigation of the state’s compliance with its protocol.
In a scathing 180-page report that was publicly released on December 28, 2022, Stanton found that TDOC repeatedly failed to follow its own protocols in performing 7 executions and preparing for an 8th between 2018 and 2022. The report documented a pattern of misconduct or incompetence on the part of execution team members who never provided a copy of the execution protocol to the state’s drug supplier and ignored or failed to inform others on the execution team of the need to conduct testing for contamination and potency.
“Not one TDOC employee made it their duty to understand the current Protocol’s testing requirements and ensure compliance,” the report said, and TDOC leadership “viewed the lethal injection process through a tunnel-vision, result-oriented lens rather than provide the necessary guidance and counsel to ensure that Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol was thorough, consistent, and followed.”
The Tennessee Supreme Court, which sets execution dates in the state, “certainly understands that we need to create a protocol that is appropriate going forward,” Lee said in his comments to reporters. “And I suspect that the Supreme Court will certainly wait for that plan to be developed in order to plan or to put any executions back on the table.”
