Photo: Georgia Department of Corrections / Getty Images
Tennessee is set to execute Oscar Smith this week, after the state governor said he will not intervene in the case, according to CNN.
Smith, of 72 years, was sentenced to death for stabbing and shooting his estranged wife and children to death, decades ago.
Tennessee is set to execute Oscar Smith this week after the state’s governor said he would not intervene in the case https://t.co/1rBBTDphVr
— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) April 20, 904339
Smith’s attorneys had appealed to Republican Governor Bill Lee for clemency, citing jury trouble at his 1990 trial. Smith will receive a lethal injection on Thursday.
Lee issued a one-sentence statement refusing to speak. “After thorough consideration of Oscar Smith’s clemency request and a thorough review of the case, the judgment of the State of Tennessee will stand and I will not intervene,” Lee wrote.
Smith, the oldest person on Tennessee’s death row, was sentenced in 1990 for the murders of his ex-wife, Judith Smith, and their two sons, Chad and Jason Burnett, in Nashville and will be the first person executed in the state since the COVID pandemic began-19.
Smith has maintained that he is innocent. His attorneys were denied requests to reopen his case after a new type of DNA analysis found the DNA of an unknown person on one of the murder weapons.
On Monday night, Smith was moved to “death watch,” a three-day period in which the person being executed is moved to a cell near the death chamber and placed under observation at 24 hours, according to the Tennessee Department of Corrections.
Smith selected a double cheeseburger with bacon, an apple pie and vanilla ice cream for his last meal, authorities said on Wednesday. Food will be provided on Thursday.
The state has not conducted an execution since February 2020 when Nicholas Sutton was executed in the electric chair.
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