Tennessee Governor Suspends All Executions, Launches Probe

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee delivers his State of the State address in the House Chamber of the Capitol building in Nashville, Tenn., on Jan. 31, 2022. Mark Zaleski/AP Photo

Tennessee’s governor on May 2 said he was suspending all executions scheduled to take place in 2022.

Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, said the move was being made because of questions that were raised regarding testing of lethal injections during preparation for executing Oscar Franklin Smith, one of the inmates on death row in Tennessee.

Smith, 72, convicted of killing his estranged wife and her two teenage sons in Nashville in 1989, had received his final meal and was slated to be put to death when Lee issued a temporary reprieve in April.

Lee attributed the reprieve—which happened just two days after he denied Smith’s request for clemency—to an “oversight in preparation for lethal injection,” with no further details disclosed.

On Monday, the governor said that the chemical cocktail that was to be administered to Smith was tested for potency and sterility, but not endotoxins.

Lee announced the state is retaining former U.S. Attorney Ed Stanton, an Obama appointee, to lead a third-party probe into what happened.

“I review each death penalty case and believe it is an appropriate punishment for heinous crimes. However, the death penalty is an extremely serious matter, and I expect the Tennessee Department of Correction to leave no question that procedures are correctly followed,” Lee said in a statement. “An investigation by a respected third-party will ensure any operational failures at TDOC are thoroughly addressed. We will pause scheduled executions through the end of 2022 in order to allow for the review and corrective action to be put in place.”

This undated photograph shows inmate Oscar Smith. Tennessee Department of Correction via AP

TDOC stands for the Tennessee Department of Correction.

The department declined to comment.

Amy Harwell, a public defender representing Smith, previously told WBIR-TV that they wanted an independent probe launched.

“We really appreciate what the TDOC has done in terms of reporting things and hopefully preserving all the evidence,” she said. “But the investigation at this point needs to be outside of that agency to see what happened and so that the public can be aware of and that we can all be sure that any future executions would be carried out properly.”

Smith is one of 47 inmates on death row in Tennessee, where executions were paused in early 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Death row inmates in Tennessee can choose whether to die by electric chair or lethal injection. Of the four executions the department has carried out since 2019, three were by electric chair.

The Tennessee Supreme Court will decide when the inmates slated to die in 2022 will be executed.