TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Stacey Shrader Joslin on Mar 30, 2022

Tennessee Senior Judge Walter Kurtz today dismissed a motion to declare death row inmate Byron Black as intellectually disabled, News Channel 5 reports. Kurtz said that because federal courts had previously determined Black was not intellectually disabled, he was not eligible to have the decision considered again. Black’s attorneys had argued the 65-year-old should be spared, citing a 2021 law that made Tennessee’s prohibition against executing people with an intellectual disability retroactive. Black is scheduled to be executed on Aug. 18 for his murder convictions in the 1988 killings of his girlfriend and her daughters.