Oscar Franklin Smith, 71, is the next death row inmate slated to be executed. Convicted in the 1989 triple slaying of his estranged wife and her two teenage sons, Smith is scheduled to die April 21.
Smith has had two execution dates rescheduled since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
As of Friday, he was one of 47 people on death row in the state. Tennessee has executed 139 people since 1916.
The last took place in February 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic. The state resumed capital punishment in 2018 after a nine-year break.
State law allows condemned inmates sentenced to death for a crime that took place before 1999 to choose between electrocution and the state's default execution method of lethal injection.
Smith has not yet announced his decision.
The men who chose electrocution in the past were among dozens of death row inmates who challenged Tennessee's lethal injection drugs in court, saying the method amounts to state-sanctioned torture. Medical experts say Tennessee's three-drug lethal injection protocol creates the sensation of drowning and burning alive.
If Smith is put to death next month by means of the electric chair, he will be the sixth Tennessee inmate executed by electrocution since 2018.
Amy Harwell, a federal public defender who serves as Smith's attorney, said in the fall after the state set her client's new execution date that she took issue with Tennessee's plan to execute him by lethal injection.
“Less than a week after the state of Oklahoma experienced the botched execution of John Grant, Tennessee has rushed to set an execution date. Tennessee proposes to kill Mr. Smith using the same three-drug protocol that caused Mr. Grant to seize, convulse and vomit before becoming unconscious," Harwell said in a statement. "Federal litigation remains pending on the Tennessee Department of Corrections’ use of this controversial execution protocol."
She also criticized the move to set Smith's execution date, saying there are still "serious questions as to the reliability of his conviction and sentence."
"Oscar Smith must not be executed before a fair hearing on his claim that the fingerprint evidence in his case was not accurate or reliable," she said. "The fingerprint examiner has been shown to have made multiple errors about print identification in this case, including failing to identify his own fingerprint."
Oscar Franklin Smith
At age 40, Smith was convicted of murder in the Oct. 1, 1989, killings of his estranged wife, Judy Lynn Smith, 35, and her sons Chad Burnett, 16, and Jason Burnett, 13, in Nashville.
Their brutal deaths took place inside a home on Lutie Court in the city's Woodbine neighborhood.
Smith, a former machinist from Robertson County, shot his estranged wife in the neck then stabbed her several times. He shot her eldest son in the left eye and then in the upper chest and left torso. Her younger son was stabbed in the neck and abdomen.
At the time of the killings, Smith was separated from his wife.
Co-workers said Smith threatened to kill her on at least 12 occasions between June and August 1989. Smith told one he threatened to kill the boys because he said she was better to them than she was to his twin children from his first marriage.
Smith took the stand at trial and denied his involvement in the killings.
He didn't convince the jury.
Harold Wayne Nichols
Harold Wayne Nichols, a serial rapist from Hamilton County, is the next Tennessee inmate scheduled to be executed after Smith.
Nichols, 61, pleaded guilty to the rape and murder of Karen Pulley, 21, a Chattanooga college student, in the late 1980s. He also was convicted of other crimes, including five other rapes in the same area, and sentenced to 421 years in prison.
A former pizza store manager, Nichols broke into Pulley's Brainerd home on Sept. 30, 1988, raped her and hit her on the head with a board at least four times, causing skull fractures and brain injuries.
A Hamilton County jury sentenced him to death in 1990.
In July 2020, Nichols notified prison officials he wanted to die by electric chair if his execution went forward as scheduled at that time. But it was delayed because of the pandemic.
The Tennessee Supreme Court pushed his new date to June 9.
Byron Black
In late February, the state Supreme Court set an Aug. 18 execution date for Byron Black, 65.
He was scheduled to be executed in 2020, but COVID-19 related precautions twice delayed the date.
Black was convicted of the 1988 murders of his girlfriend, Angela Clay, and her two daughters, Latoya and Lakeisha Clay, in Nashville. Prosecutors said he was in a jealous rage when he shot the three.
He received consecutive life sentences in two of the killings and the death penalty in the third.
A Davidson County judge is set to hear arguments that Black is significantly intellectually disabled — so much so that he is not competent to be executed. Black is asking to be resentenced under a new state law allowing the courts to review such cases. A Feb. 16 court date was postponed.
Gary Sutton
Gary Sutton, 52, is set to be put to death Oct. 6.
Sutton also was scheduled to be executed in 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic delayed the date.
He was sentenced to death in 1996 with co-defendant James Dellinger for the 1992 shotgun slaying of Tommy Griffin, 24, in Blount County.
The defendants had previously been convicted in 1993 of murdering Griffin's 34-year-old sister, Connie Branam, whose body was discovered in her burned vehicle.
State Supreme Court filings out of Knoxville show Dellinger still has pending court challenges in his case.
Donald Middlebrooks
Donald Middlebrooks, 59, also had his execution date set late last month after a 2020 date was delayed.
Middlebrooks is slated for execution Dec. 8.
Middlebrooks was convicted in the 1987 torture and murder of a 14-year-old boy in Nashville. Two others who participated in the killing received life sentences.
He has claimed in court filings he should not be executed because he is mentally ill. The court set an October deadline for Middlebrooks to challenge his competency to be executed. Black plans to file an incompetency petition between June 1 and 3.
Source: tennessean.com, Natalie Neysa Alund, March 7, 2022
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde