COVID-19 Breaks Out on Tennessee's Death Row

COVID-19 has made its way to Tennessee’s death row.

At least 11 condemned men at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution have tested positive for the illness, multiple sources with connections to the unit confirm. 

The unit that houses Tennessee’s death row prisoners was put on lockdown Monday, Nov. 9, after Donald Middlebrooks tested positive. Widespread testing followed. 

Middlebrooks, who was sentenced to death for the 1987 Nashville murder of Kerrick Majors, is one of nine men for whom the state sought execution dates last year. His attorneys have argued that he is incompetent to be executed, writing that he suffers from “a well-documented constellation of serious, debilitating psychiatric and medical diseases.” 

Also among the 11 men who have tested positive for COVID-19 is Pervis Payne, who was less than a month away from his Dec. 3 execution date when he received a reprieve from the Gov. Bill Lee on Nov. 6. The governor called off the execution due to the challenges and disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Payne was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1987 murder of a white woman named Charisse Christopher and her 2-year-old daughter Lacie Jo. But Payne has always maintained that he was an innocent bystander who came upon the horrific scene while checking to see if his girlfriend was at her apartment across the hall. A judge in September ordered DNA testing in the case on numerous pieces of evidence that had never been tested. 

In all, four Tennessee executions set for this year have been delayed — two by the Tennessee Supreme Court and two by the governor — due to the pandemic. To date, 27 people incarcerated in Tennessee prisons have died after testing positive for COVID-19, along with two members of Tennessee Department of Correction staff. 

Attorneys have been put at risk as well. Along with their representation of Tennessee death row inmates, Nashville-based federal public defenders Kelley Henry and Amy Harwell have also been at work on the case of Lisa Montgomery, a woman who is scheduled to be executed by the federal government on Dec. 8. That work has required them to travel back and forth to Fort Worth, Texas, to visit Montgomery. In a court filing on Thursday, Montgomery asked the court to call off her execution because Henry and Harwell have contracted COVID-19 and are now prevented from continuing to work on her clemency application.