Nine Tennessee death row inmates are suing the state to oppose a new round of lethal injections after an execution was abruptly called off in 2022 and a follow-up investigation found missteps in several executions.
The lawsuit was filed March 14, nearly three months after officials announced a new lethal injection protocol using the single drug pentobarbital. The Tennessee Supreme Court has scheduled executions for four inmates with the first set for May, the Associated Press reports. The lawsuit argues that pain and suffering from executions using pentobarbital violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. They contend that the Tennessee Department of Correction has failed to make changes to the execution process as the governor and an independent investigator recommended — or if it has, it has not told the public. Rather, the lawsuit says department officials may have written a new protocol with few specifics, making it harder to hold them accountable.
Tennessee executions have been paused since 2022, when the state admitted it had not followed its most recent 2018 lethal injection protocol. Among other things, the Correction Department was not consistently testing the execution drugs for potency and purity. Tennessee’s last execution was by electrocution in 2020.
An indeependent review of Tennessee’s lethal injection practice, which GOP Gov. Bill Lee ordered while pausing executions, found none of the drugs prepared for the seven inmates executed since 2018 had been fully tested — including the canceled 2022 execution. Tennessee is moving from a three-drug series to just one, the barbiturate pentobarbital. Fifteen states and the federal government have used pentobarbital in executions, and five others plan to, saysthe nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center. Previously, Tennessee struggled to obtain the drug because pharmaceutical companies were hesitant to fuel executions. The state has not said how it plans to obtain pentobarbital.
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