Death Penalty News

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — Tennessee is set to execute the first inmate under its new death penalty protocol next week, and some critics argue the new protocol is worse than before. “There are several changes that they’ve made that I’m not sure why. The guys aren’t sure why. Words that I heard on Monday night are, ‘it’s just evil,'” Dan Mann, who visits inmates on death row, said. Tennessee was previously using a three-drug lethal injection series until 2022, when Gov. Bill Lee ordered the TN Dept. of Correction (TDOC) to create a new protocol following an independent report revealing the state wasn’t following the old one.

A new book by a national expert explores the failures of the United States’ favored execution method. Texas was the first U.S. state to execute someone by lethal injection, but the idea for the novel method came from Oklahoma. Our northern neighbor was the first to adopt the plan to replace the spectacle of the electric chair with something more palatable for witnesses and the public. Texas was just the first to test it out on a person.  Since 1982, when state officials injected Charlie Brooks—convicted of murder in Fort Worth—with a lethal cocktail of drugs dreamt up by Oklahoma’s medical examiner but untested in any research setting, Texas has led the country in lethal injections. Secrets of the Killing State: The Untold Story of Lethal Injection (NYU Press, April 2025)—a new book by law professor, former prosecutor, and death penalty expert Corinna Barrett Lain—brings readers into the death chamber to bear disturbing witness to the reality of lethal injection.

NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE — Just days after Tennessee announced it had a new manual for executing death row inmates, the state's top prison officials said they aren't going to release the document to the public. The Tennessee Department of Correction had told The Associated Press to file a public records request to obtain a copy of the latest execution manual, known as a protocol. However, the agency this week denied the AP's request, saying it needs to keep the entire document secret to protect the identities of the executioner and other people involved.

Editor’s Note: This column is the product of a research collaboration with five Amherst College students, Mattea Denny, Nicolas Graber-Mitchell, Greene Ko, Rose Mroczka, and Lauren Pelosi. America’s death penalty continues to fall out of favor, a well-known fact. When the year started, eight executions were scheduled for February and March in five different states. But all of them are now on hold, and two of the three executions that were set for April already have been halted. While advocacy for the end of the death penalty has played some role, it is the decomposition of the lethal injection paradigm that has truly driven down execution numbers. We have now seen a decade of chaos and experimentation as death penalty jurisdictions tried to find reliable sources of drugs to carry out executions. States rolled out new drugs, but things did not go smoothly. The number of mishaps associated with lethal injection increased substantially. From 2010-2020, an already problematic method of ex...

The execution by lethal injection, in its current formulation, was publicly presented on May 11, 1977 by an American doctor from the state of Oklahoma, Jay Chapman, as a more “humane” alternative to other types of executions, such as electrocution or hanging, and today is the most common form of execution in the United States. Of the 22 judicial executions that occurred in 2019 in this country, 20 were by lethal injection. The first state that applied it was Texas, in 1982. In addition, it is applied in other countries, fundamentally the People’s Republic of China, although the protocol applied is not public. The combination of three lethal drugs Conventional execution protocols for lethal injection usually contemplate the consecutive administration of three drugs with lethal potential by themselves; This combination is intended to induce anesthesia first and then death from cardiorespiratory arrest. Usually, the protocols contemplate taking two routes, one in each a...

The fate of the Department of Justice’s recently proposed federal execution protocol is now in the hands of the Washington, D.C., Circuit Court of Appeals, which recently heard arguments on whether the government overstepped when it created a uniform protocol. The case, In the Matter of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Execution Protocol cases , 19-5322, was heard by judges Gregory Katsas, Neomi Rao and David Tatel on Jan. 15, with arguments lasting roughly two hours. Melissa Patterson, an attorney for the Department of Justice, urged the appellate court to overturn an injunction prohibiting the government from executing five prisoners, while Catherine Stetson, representing the death row inmates, argued the government’s execution plan was unlawful. The litigation challenging the planned executions of five inmates on death row at the federal prison in Terre Haute — Alfred Bourgeois, Dustin Lee Honken, Daniel Lewis Lee, Lezmond Mitchell and Wesley Ira Purkey — has been ongoing s...

U.S. President Donald Trump's administration argued in a federal appeals court on Wednesday that it should be allowed to execute condemned inmates without delay after a lower court ordered the executions be put on hold to hear legal challenges. The administration's efforts to resume federal executions last year after a nearly 2-decade pause were stymied by legal challenges from death row inmates. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit heard arguments for 2 hours on Wednesday on whether to lift a lower court's injunction blocking the executions. It was unclear when the 3-judge panel would issue its decision. Attorney General William Barr announced the planned resumption of executions and a new 1-drug lethal injection protocol using pentobarbital, a powerful barbiturate drug, in July. The first executions were scheduled for December but were placed on hold by a federal judge overseeing long-running lawsuits challenging the government...

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department engaged in a deep-dive vocabulary discussion as it tried to convince appeals court judges Wednesday that it has the authority to decide how to execute prisoners on federal death row, regardless of the rules in the states where inmates were convicted.  The key question, said Justice Department appellate attorney Melissa Patterson, is what the term "manner" means. At issue is what Congress meant when it declared 80 years ago that federal executions must be carried out "in the manner prescribed by the state" where inmates were convicted.  Patterson said Congress is simply referring to the type of execution, whether it's lethal injection, the primary method used in the country, or other alternatives allowed in some states, such as gas chamber or hanging. This means, Patterson argued, that as long as the Justice Department follows the general method of execution allowed in states, it has authority to decide everything el...

Assistant Federal Public Defender Dale Baich has witnessed 11 executions by lethal injection. “It’s ... eerily silent,” he said recalling the experience. “In the witness room, the witnesses don’t speak. There is a low hum of the air-conditioning unit and occasionally a voice coming over the speakers announcing that 'the prisoner is sedated' or that 'the execution is complete.'" But in 2014, during the execution of his client Joseph Wood at the state prison in Florence, something went wrong. The announcements kept repeating. "The prisoner remains sedated. The prisoner remains sedated." But Wood wasn’t acting sedated. “We could hear the sound that was coming from Mr. Wood," Baich said, "and it sounded like, like a freight train." Wood’s mouth was open. He was bucking against the restraints and making a sucking, gulping, gasping sound. It went on for two hours before the announcement finally came that the execution was compl...

Berget will be the second member of his family to be executed. His older brother, Roger, was convicted of killing a man to steal his car and spent 13 years on Oklahoma's death row until his execution in 2000 at age 39. When South Dakota executes an inmate Monday for killing a prison guard during a 2011 escape attempt, it will be the state's fourth execution since it reinstituted the death penalty in the late 1970s. Rodney Berget, 56, admitted his role in the slaying of Ronald "R.J." Johnson, who was beaten with a pipe and his head covered in plastic wrap.  Johnson, a veteran guard of nearly 24 years, died on his 63rd birthday. Some background on the case: DEADLY ESCAPE ATTEMPT On the morning of April 12, 2011, Berget and inmate Eric Robert attacked Johnson in a part of the South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls known as Pheasantland Industries. It's where inmates work on upholstery, signs, furniture and other projects. After ...