The governor declined to intervene in Oscar Smith's case Tuesday, setting the 72-year-old inmate up to be the 1st person executed in the state since the Covid-19 pandemic began.
"After thorough consideration of Oscar Smith's request for clemency and an extensive review of the case, the State of Tennessee's sentence will stand, and I will not be intervening," Lee said in a 1-line statement announcing his decision.
Last week the state's Court of Criminal Appeals denied Smith's motion to reopen his case and his motion to have a DNA analysis review of the case. Monday, the state supreme court denied hearing his appeal.
"Mr. Smith has maintained his innocence for more than 30 years. New cutting-edge DNA evidence excluding Mr. Smith as the contributor of DNA evidence on the murder weapon in this case proves his claim," Smith's attorney, Amy Harwell, told CNN Tuesday night. "The state has erected an insurmountable roadblock to Mr. Smith's claims of innocence. The Governor's denial of clemency under these circumstances is extremely disappointing."
Smith, the oldest person on Tennessee's death row, was sentenced in 1990 for the murders of his estranged wife, Judith Smith, and her 2 sons, Chad and Jason Burnett, in Nashville.
On Monday night, Smith was moved to death watch, a 3-day period in which the person being executed is moved to a cell near the death chamber and put under 24-hour observation, according to the Tennessee Department of Correction.
The state has not performed an execution since February 2020 when Nicholas Sutton was put to death by electric chair.
The pandemic delayed executions in many states, including Tennessee, though annual execution numbers have been generally decreasing since the early 2000's, according to an analysis from the Death Penalty Information Center.
In recent years, some states have struggled to acquire the necessary drugs to perform executions by lethal injection, the widely preferred method in the US, essentially putting such executions on hold. In some cases, states will also put people to death by electrocution, though a small number of states, such as South Carolina, are turning to an alternative method -- death by firing squad.
Source: CNN, Staff, April 19, 2022
Tennessee governor declines to intervene as execution looms
Attorneys for 72-year-old Oscar Smith had asked Republican Gov. Bill Lee for clemency, citing problems with the jury in his 1990 trial. Smith is set to receive a lethal injection on Thursday.
Lee issued a one-sentence statement declining to step in.
“After thorough consideration of Oscar Smith’s request for clemency and an extensive review of the case, the State of Tennessee’s sentence will stand, and I will not be intervening,” Lee wrote.
Smith was convicted of fatally stabbing and shooting Judith Smith and her sons, Jason and Chad, 13 and 16, at their Nashville home on Oct. 1, 1989. A Davidson County jury sentenced him to death the following year.
Smith has maintained that he is innocent. His attorneys were denied requests to reopen his case after a new type of DNA analysis found the DNA of an unknown person on one of the murder weapons.
The state has not put any inmates to death since February 2020, when Nicholas Sutton died in the electric chair. Executions were put on hold because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Source: Associated Press, Staff, April 19, 2022
Oscar Franklin Smith moved to death watch ahead of Thursday's scheduled execution
Prison officials announced the move Tuesday saying Smith, 72, was placed on death watch just before midnight on Monday. Death watch is the three-day period before an execution when a death row inmate is placed under 24-hour observation and stricter rules.
During death watch, Smith will get daily visits with the prison chaplain. On Wednesday, he will order his last meal.
Smith, 72, was convicted of murder in the Oct. 1, 1989, killings of his estranged wife, Judith Robirds Smith, 35, and her sons from another marriage, Chad Burnett, 16, and Jason Burnett, 13.
Their brutal deaths took place inside a home on Lutie Court in Nashville's Woodbine neighborhood.
Smith has been on death row for 32 years.
He was scheduled to be executed in June 2020 but had 2 execution dates rescheduled since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
Oscar Franklin Smith, left, who is accused of shooting and stabbing his estranged wife, Judith Smith, and her two teenage sons, Chad and Jason Burnett, to death, listens to testimony with one of his attorneys, Metro Public Defender-elect Karl Dean, in his trial at Metro Courthouse July 24, 1990. 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.
As of Tuesday, he was 1 of 47 people on death row in the state. Tennessee has executed 139 people since 1916.
He is one of several prisoners scheduled to be executed by the state this year.
Source: tennessean.com, Staff, April 19, 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