Death Row Prisoners Challenge New Tennessee Single-Drug Lethal Injection Protocol
Nine condemned Tennessee prisoners filed suit in state court on March 14, 2025, accusing the state Department of Corrections (DOC) of subjecting them to a “risk of torturous death” with a lethal execution protocol utilizing pentobarbital. Kevin Burns, Byron Black, Jon Hall, Kennath Henderson, Anthony Darrell Hines, Henry Hodges, Farris Morris, William Glen Rogers and Oscar Smith argued that the state “has burned through at least five” protocols before this one, and each one of them “collapsed under the weight of its own flaws and/or [DOC’s] mismanagement after no more than, at most, a few executions.”
The state had conducted no executions since May 2019 when it adopted the new one-drug protocol in December 2024; at that time, DOC Commissioner Frank Strada said that he was “confident the lethal injection process can proceed in compliance with departmental policy and state laws,” as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Feb. 2025, p.61.]
But the prisoners’ suit cites numerous studies showing that “pentobarbital poisoning is excruciatingly painful,” said one of the attorneys representing them, Amy Harwell. One study looked in the lungs of 58 executed prisoners and found fluid in 48 of them, evidence they experienced “a sense of suffocating or drowning that has been likened by experts to the sensation intentionally induced by the practice of waterboarding—an unambiguous form of outright torture,” the suit claimed.
“Tennessee appears to have picked this method only because they were able to get their hands on pentobarbital, not because its use for executions complies with the Constitution or state law,” Harwell said. The suit also challenged a blackout on a prisoner’s communications with anyone but his attorney beginning 12 hours before execution, impermissibly limiting his “ability to communicate his thoughts and feelings as he faces death” with family members and friends. See: Burns v. Strada, Tenn. Chancery (Davidson Cty.), Case No. 15-0414-IV.
Additional source: Nashville Banner
As a digital subscriber to Prison Legal News, you can access full text and downloads for this and other premium content.
Already a subscriber? Login
Related legal case
Burns v. Strada
| Year | 2025 |
|---|---|
| Cite | Tenn. Chancery (Davidson Cty.), Case No. 15-0414-IV |
| Level | State Trial Court |