Tennessee Finalizes New One-Drug Execution Protocol
No executions have been carried out by the Tennessee Department of Corrections (DOC) since May 2019, while the state reviewed its three-drug lethal injection protocol. That review was completed on December 27, 2024, when DOC announced a new protocol with just a single drug.
Gov. Bill Lee (R) paused all state executions in May 2022, less than a month after reprieving the last prisoner scheduled to die, Oscar Franklin Smith. As PLN reported, Lee cited a vague “technical oversight” for postponing the killing, shortly before DOC Interim Director Lisa Helton admitted to a federal judge that the state had not verified testing of the drugs and that they had not been compounded by a licensed pharmacist—a violation of state rules. [See: PLN, Nov. 2022, p.44.]
The state supreme court has set no condemned prisoner’s execution date, since DOC had no deadline for the new execution protocol. It now utilizes a fatal dose of the powerful sedative pentobarbital. Helton’s replacement, DOC Commissioner Frank Strada, began formulating the new procedure shortly after he was hired in early 2023. He claimed to be “confident the lethal injection process can proceed in compliance with departmental policy and state laws.”
Additional source: WKRN
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