Photo: PAUL BUCK / AFP / Getty Images
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee issued a temporary stay of execution for inmate Oscar Franklin Smith, one hour earlier than scheduled .
Lee referred to an “oversight in preparing for the lethal injection ” in a producer statement at 5: 42 in the afternoon. Details of what had been the problem that led to his decision were not included in the announcement.
The postponement will be until June 1, after which the Supreme Court of the state of Tennessee may set a new date.
For its part, the Tennessee Department of Correction confirmed this Thursday night that Smith will be removed from death row and returned to his cell.
The death row inmate was receiving communion with a spiritual advisor when he heard the news of the pardon, Smith’s attorney, Amy Harwell, told The Tennessean. , who is also a public defender.
The lawyer had been with the accused in her surveillance cell in the time of announcement. “It was obvious, just physical relief washed over him,” she said. “I was thanking God this had stopped for now.”
Other defense attorney, representing Smith, called for an immediate and independent review of why the injection went wrong.
“The governor did the right thing by stopping what would surely be the torture of our client. An independent entity should carry out a thorough investigation immediately,” attorney Kelley Henry told the portal.
Henry stated that his team had demanded that the The prison will keep all the evidence of the case, including the syringes and the containers, for an accurate investigation. The lawyer suspects that perhaps a mishandling of the drugs used in the lethal injection could have been the cause of the problem.
Henry had asked TSOC’s legal team to make evidence available before the scheduled execution time that the drug cocktail met standards, but said he has not received a response when the suspension was issued.
For several years it has been made known about the small amount of lethal drugs that states mix to execute those sentenced to death.
The state had used pentobarbital, a barbiturate, but manufacturers have stopped selling the drug to anyone who uses it for executions.
In the year 2018 the mixture was changed to a new one, based on in a three-drug mixture intended to put the prisoner to sleep before stopping lung and heart function.
Executions with drugs in other states of the country left those convicted in clear and prolonged agony, if not alive. In executions in Oklahoma, Arizona, Ohio, and other states, midazolam, a drug intended to render a person unconscious, did not work.
Smith is one of several death row prisoners who joined the lawsuit in 2018, alleging that lethal injection amounts to torture sanctioned by the state of Tennessee by creating the sensation of drowning and burning alive.
They objected to using the polemic Mixing the three drugs would violate constitutional prohibitions on cruel and unusual punishment.
Smith, who has 72 years old, was scheduled to die by lethal injection this Thursday at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution.
He was charged with three counts of first degree murder for the deaths of October 1989 from his ex-wife, Judith Robirds Smith, of 35 years old, and their children from another marriage, Chan Burnett, of 16, and Jason Bunett, from 13 years.
State law allows prisoners sentenced to death for a crime committed before 1990 have a choice between electrocution and the state’s default execution method of lethal injection.
Smith, who has maintained his innocence in the homicides since his arrest, has been on death row for 32 years.
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