NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Tennessee’s death penalty is on hold, and the questions hanging over it now stretch past the end of Gov. Bill Lee’s term in January.
Executions stopped after the state failed to put the only woman on its death row to death on Sept. 30. She was given two doses of the lethal injection drug pentobarbital and survived, the second failed execution in Tennessee this year.
Lee’s office announced that the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office retained former U.S. Attorney Ed Stanton to conduct an independent review of the Department of Correction’s actions. The review will look at whether the protocol was followed and whether more changes are needed to keep the state’s lethal injection process lawful and effective. Stanton led a similar review in 2022 that led the state to substantially rewrite its protocol before executions resumed.
Lee also called off the last execution scheduled for this year, which had been set for Dec. 3. The Department of Correction has maintained it followed its protocol.
It is not clear whether the review will be finished before Lee leaves office. The governor holds the power to halt executions, and Lee has not granted clemency to any death row inmate. The woman’s attorneys have asked him to commute her sentence and have gone to court to preserve evidence from the failed execution.
Any new attempt would start with the attorney general asking the Tennessee Supreme Court to set an execution date, and she would first have to be found competent to be executed.
The issue has become part of the governor’s race. Democratic nominee Jerri Green has said she would order a moratorium on executions. Republican nominee U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn said in a social media post that the death sentence should be carried out and called for bringing back the electric chair. Tennessee already allows electrocution for offenders whose crimes came before 1999 or when lethal injection cannot be used.
