Tennessee death row inmates want firing squad over lethal injection ahead of state’s first execution in years

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — As Tennessee is set to carry out its first execution under the state’s new death penalty protocol this month, some death row inmates say the firing squad would be more humane.

Currently, the state’s main method of execution is lethal injection, but death row inmates whose crimes were committed before Jan. 1, 1999, also have the option of the electric chair.

Kelley Henry, the chief of the Capital Habeas Unit at the Federal Public Defender’s Office, questions the constitutionality of the two options because they can both cause severe pain.

“When that chemical enters your system, that poison, it’s going to eat away the lining of your lungs, cause fluid to rush into your lungs, and then you will essentially drown in your own fluid,” Henry said. “Or there’s this other opportunity where you can be electrocuted and your internal organs will all be cooked, and it feels like you’re being set on fire.”

In addition, the lethal injection drug, pentobarbital, has strict procurement, storage, transportation, and administration guidelines, which a 2022 independent report revealed the state wasn’t following under its old death penalty protocol.

Henry told News 2 that, due to those issues and the potential for severe pain, many inmates would prefer the firing squad as an execution method.

“What our clients have proposed is the firing squad because that doesn’t require sophisticated training. It’s still brutal, it’s still incredibly violent, but what we know now from science and the Department of Justice report that came out in Jan. of this year, where the United States Dept. of Justice said we are no longer going to use pentobarbital because of the ways in which it causes super added pain and suffering…” Henry said. “With the firing squad, you’re going to see a brutal death, but it will be much quicker.”

Tennessee Republicans tried to add the firing squad as an execution option in 2023, but the bill never made it out of committee.

“Why would we want correctional officers to sit there and point guns at individuals as a form of killing? It’s almost legalizing first-degree murder. That is not cool,” Sen. London Lamar (D-Memphis) said in 2023.

“Some people have survived an initial volley of bullets in a firing squad execution, leading to a second volley of bullets,” Rep. G.A. Hardaway (D-Memphis) read from a lawsuit out of South Carolina during a 2023 committee hearing on the bill. “If some of this information is accurate, we’re probably going to end up in court on constitutional issues.”

A similar bill was brought this past legislative session, but it never made it to committee.

Henry and other groups will continue to push for what they call a “constitutional execution” method.

“Even if they’re going to be executed, if that’s going to be the case, they’re still entitled to a constitutional method of execution, and not only are they entitled to it, the citizens of Tennessee want to see a constitutional method,” Henry said.

It’s unclear if lawmakers plan to bring legislation to legalize the firing squad in executions next session.

The state plans to execute death row inmate Oscar Smith, by lethal injection, on May 22.

Source: MSN, Tori Gessner, May 9, 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

Comments

California | Becerra vows to extend moratorium despite past support for capital punishment

SACRAMENTO—Democrat Xavier Becerra defended the death penalty while serving as California’s attorney general, a punishment his office actively sought in the case of a gunman convicted of an Orange County mass shooting, but as the front-running candidate for governor, he has vowed to block executions if elected in November. Becerra said he will extend the blanket reprieve for all death row inmates that Gov. Gavin Newsom enacted by executive order in 2019, saying he supported “moving our state away from a costly, flawed system that disproportionately impacts Black and brown communities and too often gets it wrong.”

Iran | Afghan Citizen Executed in Wheelchair Due to Severe Mobility Disability

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – Iranian authorities have reportedly executed an Afghan citizen, identified as Valijan Nourzay, at the central prison in Rafsanjan, according to the human rights organization Hengaw. Hengaw said in a statement on Sunday, September 6, that Nourzay was executed early Wednesday last week at Rafsanjan Central Prison. According to the organization, Nourzay had a severe mobility disability and was executed while in a wheelchair. Hengaw, citing informed sources, reported that Nourzay had been pursued by Iranian authorities three years ago over an alleged murder. He was reportedly seriously wounded after Iranian security forces opened fire on him in Rafsanjan before being arrested and later sentenced to death.

Egypt TV presenter and 11 others sentenced to death in major drugs case

Egyptian television presenter Sarah Khalifa and 11 others have been sentenced to death by hanging after being convicted of drug trafficking and rape, while nine defendants received life sentences and seven were acquitted. Egyptian television presenter Sarah Khalifa, 39, has been sentenced to death by hanging along with 11 other defendants after being found guilty in a drugs case involving a criminal gang accused of importing ingredients used to manufacture narcotics for sale.

He Spent 27 Years on Death Row as a Wrongfully Convicted Man. What Comes Next?

23-hour solitary confinement. 115-degree heat. Jimmie Duncan is haunted by the decades he spent in Louisiana’s Angola Prison—and how, even after being released, he still isn’t truly free. Jimmie “Chris” Duncan wiped the sweat off his forehead as he assessed his temporary home from the parking lot of a rundown motel in central Louisiana. Sure, there’s drug dealing and prostitution, he said on a recent summer afternoon. And he suspected his neighbors were cooking meth on a floor below the room he paid $350 a week to rent.

California | He spent 19 years on death row. His conversion to Judaism helped him endure

Johnny Morales struggled to find sleep. He dozed off for a few moments, but officers came to his death row cell and woke him a little after midnight. They needed to inventory and box up his belongings. He was leaving San Quentin. Hands cuffed behind his back, he walked across the empty upper yard in the dim gray hours before daylight. An officer walked alongside him step for step, black latex-gloved fingers holding onto Morales’s arm. For almost 20 years, Morales could only experience the world outside his 4-by-11 foot cell in the condemned housing unit like this—chained and escorted by officers. Security protocols required all death row residents be handcuffed or shackled any time they were out in open space with staff.

Ex-corrections officials urge governor to commute Kansas death sentences

Former Kansas corrections officials are urging Governor Laura Kelly to grant clemency to the state's death row inmates. Former Kansas Corrections Secretary Roger Werholtz has several reasons why he thinks the state should abolish the death penalty. Werholtz, who served as secretary from 2002 to 2010 and returned on an interim basis in 2019, uses his discussions with peers and family members of victims as well as experiences of seeing wrongly convicted people getting exonerated as his guiding points.

Florida executes Harold Gene Lucas

Florida state officials executed 74-year-old Harold Gene Lucas by lethal injection on Tuesday evening, concluding a 50-year legal saga stemming from the 1976 murder of a 16-year-old girl in Bonita Springs. STARKE, Fla. -- A man convicted of killing a teenage girl who rejected his romantic advances and wounding two of her friends was put to death Tuesday in the first of three executions planned this month in Florida. Harold Gene Lucas, 74, was pronounced dead at 6:18 p.m. following a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke, authorities said. He was sentenced to death for the 1976 shooting attack on Jill Piper and the wounding of her friends, Richard Byrd Jr. and Terri Rice.

Florida executes Daniel Owen Conahan Jr.

In Florida’s 15th execution this year, man put to death for killing linked to ‘Hog Trail Murders’ A Florida man convicted in one of a series of suspected killings that became known as the “Hog Trail Murders” in the 1990s was put to death Thursday, becoming the state’s 15th person executed this year. Daniel Owen Conahan Jr., 72, was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. after receiving a 3-drug lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. He had been sentenced to die for the 1996 kidnapping and strangling of Richard Allen Montgomery, whose mutilated body was found in a wooded southwest Florida area where authorities found the remains of at least 6 people over a 3-year span.

Arizona AG seeks execution date for man convicted in 1995 trooper killing

Trooper Bob Martin was killed during a traffic stop on the Beeline highway; execution for his killer could be as soon as January PHOENIX (AZFamily)—The Arizona Attorney General is asking for an execution date to be set for a man convicted in the killing of an Arizona State Trooper over 30 years ago. On Aug. 15, 1995, Trooper Bob Martin was shot and killed while performing a traffic stop along the Beeline Highway.

Florida set to carry out 14th execution this year in the nation's busiest death chamber

MIAMI (AP) — A Florida man convicted of fatally shooting a 16-year-old girl who rejected his romantic advances and wounding two of her friends is set to be executed Tuesday in the first of three lethal injections scheduled this month in the state. Harold Gene Lucas, 74, is set to receive a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke starting at 6 p.m. He would be the 14th prisoner put to death this year in Florida, and Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has already signed death warrants for two more executions set for later this September.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog