Tennessee’s Supreme Court struck down a legal hurdle to the death penalty this week, but the years-long stay on executions in the state could continue.
A group of nearly three dozen death row inmates is suing Tennessee’s Commissioner of Correction Derrick D. Schofield and Riverbend Maximum Security Institution Wayne Carpenter, among others, claiming that the state’s method of execution is inhumane.
Stephen Michael West is named as the primary inmate bringing the suit. West was sentenced to death after a 1986 conviction for stabbing a mother and daughter to death in Union County.
The inmates allege that the drug used in executions – a lethal injection of pentobarbitol, known as the ‘single drug method’ – can cause ‘lingering death,’ and should be considered cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. The injection renders the inmate unconscious, before the heart stops. The inmates claim subjects could still have some heart electrical activity for 34 minutes up to an hour after injection.
There was also question of whether it is legal for doctors and pharmacists to prescribe and provide the lethal drug.
On March 28, the Supreme Court disagreed with both claims. Chief Justice Jeffrey Bivens wrote in his opinion that “The intended result of an execution is to render the inmate dead.”
Pending these appeals, all executions have been put on hold. Tennessee has not executed anyone since 2009.
"We are not likely going to execute anybody soon, because there are still layers of this appeal to go,” said WBIR legal expert Don Bosch. “We're still looking at least a couple years before decisions are handed down as to this [single drug] method of execution.”
Attorney Stephen Ross Johnson heads the Innocence and Wrongful Convictions Clinic at the University of Tennessee law school. He said the decision could clear the way for executions to resume in Tennessee.
“In general, I am opposed to the death penalty because I think it is unfairly applied, overly expensive. And, how in the world can we have a perfect punishment, a punishment that is absolute, in an imperfect system,” said Johnson.
Since the litigation began, two death row inmates named on the suit have died of natural causes. Tennessee Department of Corrections lists 61 inmates currently on death row.
This may not be the end of the case. Attorneys for the inmates say they plan to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Tennessee stands alone in requiring a contract with a pharmacist who must agree to violate state and federal drug laws in order to comply with the protocol,” wrote Kelley Henry, Assistant Public Defender for the Middle District of Tennessee. “We will be seeking review of this novel protocol in the United States Supreme Court.”
Families of victims have previously expressed frustration with the amount of time convicts spend on death row.
Billy Ray Irick is a plaintiff on the suit. He was convicted in the 1980s of strangling seven-year-old Paula Dyer in Knox County. In 2013, before Irick’s scheduled execution date, Paula’ brother, Tony, spoke to 10News about the legal challenges.
“You know, with the lethal injections, they don’t want him to suffer, they want it to be instantaneous,” he said. “Her [death] wasn’t instantaneous, by no means. Hours. Hours this lasted.”
The U.S. Supreme Court is not required to take up the case, but could do so with four votes.