Thursday night's planned execution of death row inmate Oscar Franklin Smith will not move forward due to "an oversight in preparation for lethal injection." A statement from Gov. Bill Lee reads as follows:
Due to an oversight in preparation for lethal injection, the scheduled execution of Oscar Smith will not move forward tonight. I am granting a temporary reprieve while we address Tennessee Department of Correction protocol. Further details will be released when they are available.
Smith is 72 years old, the oldest man on death row in Tennessee.
"The governor did the right thing by stopping what was sure to be the torture of our client," says Supervising Assistant Federal Public Defender Kelley Henry in a statement to the Scene. "A thorough investigation should immediately take place by an independent entity."
The reprieve will reportedly remain in effect until June 1.
Smith previously had two execution dates rescheduled due to the pandemic. An emergency motion to halt his execution was denied by a federal judge on Wednesday morning. The last person put to death in the state — Nick Sutton in February 2020 — was the seventh inmate executed by Tennessee over the course of 18 months.
In 1990, Smith was convicted for the previous year’s fatal shooting and stabbing of Judith Smith and her sons in their Nashville home. Sentenced to death by a Davidson County jury, Smith maintained his innocence for the following three decades.
Smith’s attorney Amy Harwell recently appealed to the Davidson County Criminal Court, seeking to reopen the case and citing DNA evidence.
"After 32 years of adamantly asserting his innocence, Oscar Smith finally has proof that someone else murdered his family," Harwell wrote in a release. "This new DNA evidence can and should be matched to the actual killer — who also left their fingerprints on the murder weapon — so that Mr. Smith may finally be exonerated."
That motion was denied, as was a motion to appeal. Smith’s request for clemency was denied this week by Gov. Bill Lee, who issued the following statement at the time: "After thorough consideration of Oscar Smith's request for clemency and an extensive review of the case, the State of Tennessee's sentence will stand, and I will not be intervening.”
Forty-six men and one woman remain on death row in Tennessee.
