The office of Kelley Henry, a federal defender representing death row prisoners in Tennessee, has formally requested that Gov. Bill Lee pause executions through March 1, 2026, pending a court review of the state’s new lethal injection protocol.
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Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti recently secured new execution dates for four men in 2025, including a date in May for Oscar Smith and in August for Byron Black. Henry explains in a lengthy letter to Lee that, absent Lee’s immediate intervention, Smith and Black would both be executed by lethal injection before a court has approved the new state protocol.
Smith’s execution was abruptly called off on April 21, 2022, by Lee because the state had failed to follow proper chemical testing protocols. Tennessee halted executions for nearly three years to investigate and redraft its lethal injection protocol. In 2023 Lee brought in Frank Strada to lead the Tennessee Department of Correction, which furnished a new lethal injection protocol early this year.
Nine men on death row, including Smith and Black, filed a legal challenge to the new protocol in March. Henry tells the Scene she is confident that the court will rule in favor of these plaintiffs.
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“ Oscar's interests and Byron's interests would be extinguished by their death, but the lawsuit would move forward,” Henry tells the Scene outside the Fred D. Thompson Federal Courthouse on Thursday morning. “It's arbitrary and unfair for these clients to not get the benefit of that judicial review while the others do. It's not about pro-death-penalty or anti-death-penalty — this lawsuit can't stop them from being executed. It’s really to prevent them from being tortured by this protocol, because we believe the protocol is torture. We believe it's 18 to 20 minutes of chemical waterboarding, and we're trying to prevent that.”
The men awaiting execution specifically call out the state’s new mandate to use pentobarbital for executions. The drug was recently banned for use in federal executions by the U.S. Department of Justice — the Eighth Amendment protects against “cruel and unusual punishment” and often forms the basis for legal challenges to execution methods. At a press conference Thursday, Henry and others focused critical remarks on the new protocol.
Assistant federal public defender Amy Harwell (left) and federal public defender Kelley Henry
“ They make it seem as if a lethal injection is a medical procedure,” Henry told reporters and news cameras. “It's not. It's poison. You're watching poison being put into our client's bodies, and science is clear on this matter. Our clients have actually said they would rather be shot, would rather have death by firearm, than death by poisoning. That is what we have put in front of chancery court.”
Henry was joined by assistant federal public defender Amy Harwell, victims' rights advocate and founder of Rodney's Village Rafiah Muhammad-McCormick, Stacy Rector of Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty and Pastor Kevin Riggs, a spiritual adviser on Tennessee’s death row.
