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Oscar Franklin Smith was executed by the state Thursday morning, nearly 35 years after a Nashville jury convicted him for the 1989 murders of his estranged wife, Judy Smith, and her two teenage sons, Chad and Jason Burnett. His execution by lethal injection marks the return of Tennessee’s death penalty after more than five years.
It was also the first to be carried out with pentobarbital under the state’s new single-drug lethal injection protocol. Media witnesses described Smith’s face turning a bluish purple but said he otherwise did not show outward signs of distress. In a long final statement, he said the criminal justice system is broken and criticized Gov. Bill Lee for allowing executions to proceed anyway, noting that “he has the last word.”
“He’s a damned fool if he doesn’t realize we’ve got [innocent] men at Riverbend waiting to die,” Smith said. “I’m not the first, and I won’t be the last.”
An agreement with state officials allowed Smith’s spiritual adviser, the Rev. Monica Coakley, to be present in the execution chamber with him. She performed a final liturgy, reading from scripture and singing songs, including “I’ll Fly Away.” With some of his final words, Smith maintained his innocence as he has for decades, saying faintly, “I didn’t kill her.”
Tennessee Department of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada exited the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution just before 11 a.m. and announced that the execution was finished. He said Smith had been pronounced dead at 10:47 a.m.
Smith’s execution was the first carried out in the state since 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic halted a historic spree of them in less than two years. Tennessee joins 15 other states and the federal government in having used pentobarbital for an execution.
Attorneys representing death row inmates challenged the protocol in court, raising questions about how the state obtained the drug and the effect it would have on Smith and others executed with it. Their lawsuit, filed in Davidson County Chancery Court in March, argued the state was likely using pentobarbital purchased on the gray market because while the drug itself is legal, major manufacturers have banned its use in executions. That only increases the chances, they argued, of torturous effects coming from a lethal dose of the drug. The suit pointed to multiple studies showing people executed with pentobarbital experienced pulmonary edema.
“It can create a sense of suffocating or drowning that has been likened by experts to the sensation intentionally induced by the practice of waterboarding — an unambiguous form of outright torture,” the suit read.
Prison scene
Thursday morning, Smith lay upon a stainless-steel gurney in the prison’s execution chamber, with straps across his chest and wrist, right arm extended for the IV. Within moments after the pentobarbital was administered through a tube from another room, Smith closed his eyes and lay motionless. His breathing stopped, and the color in his face turned red and then blue. It took seven minutes from the time he received the dose until he was pronounced dead.
In attendance at the execution were some of the victims’ family. At a lectern under a white canopy tent in the prison parking lot, standing in front of large photographs of Judy Smith and her sons, Mike Robirds and Terri Osborne gave a statement after witnessing the death of the man convicted of killing their sister and nephews. They thanked law enforcement and officials in the justice system for seeking justice for their family. Smith’s death sentence, they said, “was not ours to determine, but we stand by the legal system that made the decision.”
Osborne said the family will continue to miss the sound of her sister’s voice and cherish memories with her nephews. But with her statement, she also sought to address the more broadly applicable context of their murders.
“This tragedy is not only a personal loss — it is part of a much larger issue that affects countless families across our society,” she said. “Domestic violence destroys lives. We hope that sharing our story helps others recognize the warning signs and dangers involved, especially for children. For those who may be living in fear or in the grip of abuse, please know that you are not alone.”
In a small field adjacent to the prison, a group of around 50 people had gathered to protest the death penalty and hold a vigil for Smith. Several of the demonstrators commented on the odd dissonance of beautiful weather on the morning of an execution. Only two people showed up in a separate field to show their support for the death penalty.
After the execution, one of Smith’s attorneys, assistant federal public defender Amy Harwell, eulogized her client and reiterated questions about the effects of pentobarbital.
“Oscar Smith was a beloved child of God. He will be remembered for his cantankerous, curmudgeonly brand of kindness, as well as his skill with leather crafts,” she said. “Because an autopsy would violate Oscar’s deeply held religious beliefs, we will never know for sure whether he experienced the torture of pulmonary edema while Tennessee took his life. We do know, however, from the dozens of autopsies that have been performed on those executed by pentobarbital, that this execution method causes excruciating pain and suffering. Our state should stop poisoning people to death in this cruel manner.”
Case review
The murders Smith was accused of were said to have occurred shortly before midnight on Oct. 1, 1989. Judy Smith and her sons were found dead in their Woodbine home the day after police received a troubling 911 call from that address. Responding officers reported finding nothing unusual. But the following afternoon, a 13-year-old neighbor discovered the bodies amid a brutal murder scene after walking through the home’s open back door. All three had stab wounds and slashed throats. Judy and Chad had also been shot.
Smith maintained his innocence despite damning, but largely circumstantial, evidence. The couple had been going through a contentious divorce and were fighting over custody of the young twins they’d had together just a few years earlier. When the murders occurred, Smith was facing domestic violence charges for allegedly assaulting his wife. Family members and coworkers who worked with her at an East Nashville Waffle House would later testify that he’d threatened to kill her and her sons. At trial, a fingerprint examiner testified that a bloody handprint found at the scene matched Oscar’s left hand, even including his two missing fingers. Police and prosecutors also heavily relied on the recording of the 911 call, in which they said Chad Burnett could be heard screaming Smith’s name and begging him to stop.
But Smith denied it all, including the murders and the allegations of domestic violence and death threats. He said the four of them had spent the day together. Later that night, he said, he left Judy’s house with their young twins, dropped the children off at his mother’s and left for a job in Kentucky. At his sentencing hearing, as his attorneys made the case against a death sentence, a clinical psychologist who had evaluated him diagnosed him as suffering from a paranoid personality disorder, chronic depressive neurosis and a paranoid delusional disorder. They also noted that his father was a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. The clinical psychologist who had evaluated Oscar to determine if he was competent to stand trial, however, said he showed no signs of mental illness.
This article first appeared on Nashville Banner and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
