TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Kate Prince on May 2, 2022

All five executions scheduled for this year have been paused by Gov. Bill Lee as the state awaits a third-party review of lethal injection protocols in Tennessee, WPLN reports. Lee stopped the execution of Oscar Smith on April 21 after discovering the lethal injection medication hadn’t gone through all the quality tests that are required. That incident prompted Lee to order an independent review of that case and of the policy manual used in executions and relevant staffing issues at the Department of Corrections. Former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee and Butler Snow attorney Edward Stanton III has been tapped to conduct the review. “The death penalty is an extremely serious matter,” Lee said. “I expect the Tennessee Department of Correction to leave no question that procedures are correctly followed.”