Tennessee’s governor has called off what was to have been the state’s first execution since the start of the pandemic
FILE - This undated photo provided by the Tennessee Department of Correction shows inmate Oscar Smith. Tennessee's governor said Tuesday, April 19, 2022, that he will not intervene in the scheduled execution later this week of Smith, convicted of fatally stabbing and shooting his estranged wife and her sons decades ago. Attorneys for the 72-year-old asked Republican Gov. Bill Lee for clemency, citing problems with the jury in his 1990 trial.
Smith was convicted of the 1989 killings of his estranged wife and her teenage sons. Shortly before the governor’s surprise announcement, the U.S. Supreme Court had denied a last-hour bid by Smith’s attorneys seeking to block the execution plan. In Tennessee, authorities had said earlier that the state was planning for five executions this year, including Smith's. It has been seeking to resume its quick, pre-pandemic pace of putting inmates to death. The five pending death warrants tie Tennessee with Texas for the most nationally this year, according to the Washington-based nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center.
for the killing of a fellow inmate in an east Tennessee prison. Of the seven inmates Tennessee has put to death since 2018 — when Tennessee ended an execution pause stretching back to 2009 — only two died by lethal injection.
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