A lawsuit by inmates is challenging Tennessee’s plans to resume executions. Here’s how
Nine Tennessee death row inmates are suing the state over its push for a new round of lethal injections after an execution was abruptly called off in 2022 and a follow-up investigation found scores of missteps in several executions. The lawsuit was filed March 14 in state court, nearly three months after officials announced a new lethal injection protocol using the single drug pentobarbital. The Tennessee Supreme Court recently agreed to schedule executions for four inmates with the first set for May. The lawsuit argues that pain and suffering from executions using pentobarbital violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. They also contend that the Tennessee Department of Correction has failed to make changes to the execution process as the governor and an independent investigator recommended — or if it has, it has not told the public. Rather, the lawsuit claims, department officials wrote a new protocol with few specifics, making it harder to hold them accountable. The attorney general’s office said it is reviewing the lawsuit. A Correction spokesperson declined to comment on it. Tennessee’s lethal injection problem Tennessee executions have been paused since 2022, when the state admitted it had not been following its most recent 2018 lethal injection protocol. Among other things, the Correction Department was not consistently testing the execution drugs for potency and purity. Tennessee’s last execution was by electrocution in 2020. An independent review of Tennessee’s lethal injection practice, which GOP Gov. Bill Lee ordered while pausing executions, found none of the drugs prepared for the seven inmates executed since 2018 had been fully tested — including the canceled 2022 execution. Later, the state attorney general’s office conceded in court that two of the people most responsible for overseeing Tennessee’s lethal injection drugs “incorrectly testified” under oath that officials were testing the chemicals as required. Two department officials with execution-related duties were fired. The new lawsuit says the Department of Correction has said nothing publicly about