MARYVILLE, Tenn. — Tennessee prosecutors have a deadline of Oct. 11 to announce if they'll pursue the death penalty against an Alcoa man accused of shooting and killing a Blount County deputy.
Kenneth Wayne DeHart Jr. was indicted on 21 charges earlier this month, including a premeditated first-degree murder charge and an attempted first-degree murder charge.
Prosecutors haven't announced whether they'll pursue the death penalty at this point.
The death penalty is rarely used, and Tennessee records show there's currently one man on death row from Blount County.
According to Tennessee's death penalty laws, prosecutors can pursue the death penalty in murder cases with certain extenuating circumstances, including a killing committed against a law enforcement officer.
Only one Blount County man on death row
Gary Sutton, convicted of first-degree murder in 1996, is the only person from Blount County who's currently on death row.
Sutton, and his uncle James Dellinger, were convicted in the murders of Tommy Griffin and Connie Branham in the early 1990s.
Both Griffin and Branham were siblings, whose bodies were found about a week apart in February 1992.
Police said Griffin's body was found in Walland and Branham's body was found in a burnt-out car in Sevier County. Griffin's mobile home in Sevier County also burned around the time of his killing.
Both Sutton and Dellinger were sentenced to death in connection after being convicted of Griffin's murder.
Dellinger died last year from cancer after spending more than two decades on death row.
He lost an appeal in 2014 in Blount County. In that hearing, his attorneys said he wanted to submit new evidence that would overturn an earlier decision that said his IQ was over 70.
Tennessee law says anyone with an IQ lower than 70 can't be sentenced to death, but a judge refused to re-open the issue.
Sutton was set to be executed in 2022, but that was canceled because of concerns about Tennessee's execution methods.
Some of Sutton's family members have maintained his innocence in this case and are petitioning Governor Bill Lee for a pardon in his case.
Other East Tennesseans on death row
Other East Tennesseans on death row include people from Knox and Cocke counties.
Lemaricus Davidson was sentenced to death for the 2007 killings of Chris Newsom and Channon Christian.
Terry King was sentenced to death for the 1983 killing of Diana Kay Smith.
Christa Pike, the only woman on death row in Tennessee, was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer.
Dennis Suttles was convicted in 1996 of killing Patricia Gail Rhodes, in the parking lot of a South Knoxville Taco Bell.
Jonathan Stephenson was convicted of hiring a hitman to kill his wife, Lisa, who was shot in the head with a high-powered rifle in Cocke County in 1989.
Oscar Smith was convicted in 1989 in the triple slayings of his estranged wife, Judy Lynn Smith, and her two sons, Chad and Jason Burnett, from a previous marriage in Nashville. He was just hours away from having his death sentence carried out two years ago before Gov. Bill Lee abruptly intervened.
The Status of Executions
In April 2022, Gov. Bill Lee halted all executions in Tennessee after launching an independent review of the state's lethal injection preparation process following an unspecified "oversight" discovered just before Oscar Smith's scheduled execution. The review finished in December 2022, and the Associated Press reported the Tennessee Department of Correction then fired its top attorney and inspector general for "incorrectly testifying" under oath that they were testing the lethal injection chemicals for bacterial contamination.
The independent report found Tennessee had never fully tested drugs for its executions since rewriting the state's lethal injection protocol in 2018, according to the Associated Press.
Executions have not resumed in Tennessee since the investigation, however, Lee noted he did not wish to stop the administration of the death penalty altogether.
Tennessee has a secondary method of carrying out executions -- the electric chair -- and several death row inmates were put to death by that method between 2018 and 2020. However, the electric chair can't be used as a primary means of execution and can only be used if inmates waive the right to lethal injection.
With the status of lethal injections left in limbo, the state would have to change the law in order to resume executions through a different method, such as a firing squad. A few attempts to do so in the state legislature in 2023 stalled.