Oscar Franklin Smith, Tennessee death row inmate, declines to select execution method

Oscar Franklin Smith, a Tennessee death row inmate scheduled for execution on May 22, will die by lethal injection if the process moves forward.

Smith, who was asked to choose between lethal injection and the electric chair, declined to pick, his attorney Kelley Henry, a supervisory assistant federal public defender, said. When an inmate does not choose, the method defaults to lethal injection.

It's not the first time Smith has been given this grim decision and declined. That decision to not choose ultimately saved his life for three more years.

May 22 will be Smith's fourth execution date after the third in 2022 was called off about an hour before he was to be executed. Gov. Bill Lee issued a temporary reprieve of Smith's execution due to an oversight in the lethal injection protocol.

The oversight ultimately led to a three-year moratorium on executions in Tennessee, an independent audit and a new protocol.

Smith, 75, was convicted in 1990 of murder in the October 1989 killings of his estranged wife, 35-year-old Judy Robirds Smith, and her sons from a previous marriage, 16-year-old Chad Burnett and 13-year-old Jason Burnett.

State law allows death row inmates sentenced in crimes that happened before 1999 to select either electrocution or the state's default execution method of lethal injection.

Smith has been one of several death row inmates to file lawsuits about the lethal injection protocol.

Smith is the first of four condemned inmates given execution dates this year. One, Donald Ray Middlebrooks, was scheduled for execution on Sept. 24, but he was later issued a stay of execution on April 2.

The Tennessee Supreme Court also set dates for:

Byron Lewis Black, execution date Aug. 5
Harold Wayne Nichols, execution date Dec. 11

Source: tennessean.com, Staff, April 30, 2025

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde

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