Five years after last execution, Tennessee attorney general looks to resume killings

The Tennessee Attorney General's Office is asking the state Supreme Court to set execution dates for five people on death row, five years after the state last put a person to death.

The Attorney General's Office on Friday filed motions asking the court to set execution dates for Kevin Burns, Jon Douglas Hall, Kennath Artez Henderson, Anthony Darrell Dugard Hines and William Glenn Rogers, according to a spokesperson for the office.

The motions are the next step in the process to resume executions in Tennessee after they were paused in 2022.

The Tennessee Department of Correction in December finalized a new lethal injection protocol using a single drug, pentobarbital, a switch from the previous method of execution, which used a three-drug mixture. Gov. Bill Lee paused all executions in the state in May 2022 due to concerns over the drugs used in lethal injection, and audits found the corrections department had failed to follow the previous execution protocol for years, resulting in condemned prisoners likely being killed with expired, compromised or untested drugs.

Less than a month after Tennessee released its new protocol, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it was abandoning pentobarbital for use in executions, citing concerns over "unnecessary pain and suffering."

A handful of the 46 people on death row in Tennessee already had execution dates set before they were granted a reprieve at the time of Lee's 2022 announcement. It is up to the Tennessee Supreme Court to determine what order the executions may be set for, according to a Tennessee Administrative Office of the Courts spokesperson.

While executions were halted in 2022, the state had not put anyone to death since February 2020, when it killed Nicholas Sutton by electric chair. All five people the state is seeking execution dates for could choose to die by electrocution, which is an option for people who were sentenced to death before 1999, according to the Tennessee Department of Correction.

Kevin Riggs, a Franklin pastor who has visited death row for years and co-authored a book with Burns, one of the men the state is looking to execute, called the decision to resume capital punishment in the state a waste of time and resources.

"Nothing has happened because these men haven't been executed," Riggs said. "No one else has been harmed because they haven't been executed, so it's just a waste of time and resources. There's no reason for it."

The development mirrors a trend in three other states that are resuming executions in March after as long as 15 years without putting a condemned person to death.

Burns, 55, was sentenced to death after a Shelby County jury convicted him of felony murder for the 1992 killing of Damond Dawson. Burns was part of a group of men who carried out a robbery that ended in the fatal shootings of 17-year-old Dawson and 20-year-old Tracey Johnson, and Burns maintains he did not pull the trigger. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene in his case, although a justice said there was a "very robust possibility" Burns did not kill either victim.

Hall, 60, was sentenced to death after a Madison County jury convicted him of murder for the 1994 killing of his wife, Billie Jo Hall.

Henderson, 50, was sentenced to death after he pleaded guilty to killing Fayette County Deputy Tommy Bishop during an attempted escape from the Fayette County Jail in 1997.

Hines, 64, was sentenced to death after a Cheatham County jury convicted him of murder in the 1985 killing and rape of Katherine Jean Jenkins, a hotel maid.

Rogers, 62, was sentenced to death after a Montgomery County jury convicted him of murder in the 1996 killing of 9-year-old Jacqueline "Jackie" Beard. His death sentence was briefly vacated by a federal appeals court in 2022 due to concerns over the quality of his legal representation during the sentencing phase of his trial.

The five other people who were granted a reprieve in 2022 were Oscar Franklin Smith, whose execution was scheduled for April 21, 2022, but was granted a reprieve an hour before he was scheduled to die; Harold Wayne Nichols, whose execution was scheduled for June 9, 2022; Byron Lewis Black, whose execution was set for Aug. 18, 2022; Gary Wayne Sutton, whose execution was scheduled for Oct. 6, 2022; and Donald Ray Middlebrooks, whose execution was scheduled for Dec. 8, 2022.

Source: tennessean.com, Evan Mealins, February 18, 2025

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