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The Tennessee Supreme Court has scheduled four people to be executed by the state next year, including the only woman on the state’s death row.
Kelley Henry, an assistant federal public defender in Nashville who leads the office’s work on death penalty cases, expressed concern about future executions in light of what happened at Byron Black’s lethal injection in August. Several minutes after receiving a lethal dose of pentobarbital, he lifted his head and groaned twice, even saying audibly that it was “hurting so bad.”
The autopsy report later confirmed that Black suffered from pulmonary edema during the execution, but his attorneys say the autopsy failed to document the condition of his veins and the EKG results, leaving many questions unanswered.
“So many questions about why the execution of Byron Black was botched remain,” Henry says in a written statement. “Our public records requests have gone unanswered and important documents are still shrouded in secrecy. We will continue to fight to bring the truth of what happened to light before these executions move forward to protect our clients from being tortured the way Byron was.”
Smith, who was convicted of the 1989 murders of his estranged wife and her two teenage sons, was put to death by lethal injection Thursday morning, marking the return of the state’s death penalty
Black was the second death row inmate to be killed by the state in 2025, following Oscar Smith’s execution in May. Harold Nichols is scheduled to be executed on Dec. 11.
The new dates were set in orders from the court on Tuesday for the following individuals.
Tony Carruthers: May 21, 2026
Tony Carruthers was sentenced to death in 1996 after he and James Montgomery were convicted for the kidnapping and murder of Marcellos Anderson, his mother Delois and Anderson’s friend Frederick Tucker in Shelby County. He has maintained his innocence. After Carruthers went through six defense attorneys, his trial judge refused to appoint him another, leaving him to represent himself at trial. His attorneys have argued in recent years that Carruthers was mentally incompetent to stand trial, much less to serve as his own attorney. If he is executed he would be the first person in nearly a century to be executed after having done so.
Darrell Hines: Aug. 13, 2026
Darrell Hines was sentenced to death in 1986 for the stabbing death of Katherine Jean Jenkins, who was working as a maid at a motel in Kingston Springs. He has maintained his innocence. The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2020 that Hines was entitled to a new trial because his defense attorney had failed to reveal that the man who found Jenkins’ body had been at the motel for a weekly meet-up with his mistress, allowing him to tell a different story during his trial testimony. That ruling was later reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Christa Pike: Sept. 30, 2026
Christa Pike was sentenced to death in 1996 for the murder of Colleen Slemmer when they were both attending a job training program for troubled teens in Knoxville. The killing reportedly came after Pike became convinced that Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, who was also charged, along with another teen, in connection with the killing. Pike was 18 years old when the murder occurred, and at 19, she became the youngest woman sentenced to death in the modern era of the death penalty. In 2004, she was convicted of attempted murder following an altercation with another incarcerated woman. As the only woman currently on Tennessee’s death row, she was held in what was essentially solitary confinement until a court settlement in 2024. She would be the first woman killed by the state in more than 200 years.
Sentenced to death at 19, Christa Pike would be the first woman executed in Tennessee in roughly two centuries
In a statement, Pike’s attorneys — Kelly Gleason, Randy Spivey, Stephen Ferrell and Molly Kincaid — expressed disappointment at the court’s order.
“We remain steadfast that Christa’s death sentence should be commuted given her youth and severe mental illness at the time of the crime,” they say. “Christa was sentenced to death in 1996 for a crime she and two others committed when she was just 18 years old. Christa’s childhood was fraught with years of physical and sexual abuse and neglect. With time and treatment for bipolar and post-traumatic stress disorders, which were not diagnosed until years later, Christa has become a thoughtful woman with deep remorse for her crime.”
Gary Sutton: Dec. 3, 2026
Gary Sutton was sentenced to death, along with his uncle James Dellinger, for the 1992 murders of Tommy Griffin and Griffin’s sister Connie Branam in East Tennessee. He has maintained his innocence. Sutton’s family and attorneys have argued that he was convicted after an unfair trial with an inexperienced attorney and emphasized that he was close friends with Griffin.
In a statement, Sutton’s attorney Randy Spivey points out that the scientific evidence linking Sutton to the case is from former Davidson County medical examiner Charles Harlan, who was suspended without pay in 1994 for a long list of mistakes.
“There is no motive for the crime and no direct evidence linking Gary to the murder of his friend Tommy Griffin,” Spivey says, adding that Sutton is also intellectually disabled and has a claim on this pending in court.
Dellinger died on death row in 2023.
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