COVID-19 Prison Outbreaks Kill Death-Row Prisoners in Ohio and Missouri and Infect At Least 11 on Tennessee’s Death Row

New COVID-19 out­breaks on the nation’s death rows have killed pris­on­ers in Ohio and Missouri and sick­ened at least 11 men on Tennessee​’s death row. 

James Frazier (pic­tured, left), 79, Ohio’s old­est death-row pris­on­er, died of the virus on November 19, 2020 after 15 years on death row. He suf­fered from demen­tia fol­low­ing a series of strokes, and his lawyers had recent­ly filed a peti­tion to bar his exe­cu­tion on grounds of men­tal incom­pe­ten­cy. Richard ​“Ricky” Davis (pic­tured, right), 56, who con­tract­ed the coro­n­avirus on Missouri’s death row in the Potosi Correctional Center, died on December 1, after six­teen days on a res­pi­ra­tor. He had been on death row for 12 years.

Frazier was one of twelve Ohio pris­on­ers to have died of the virus at the Franklin Medical Center where Frazier had been incar­cer­at­ed since March. Since the pan­dem­ic began, 111 pris­on­ers in Ohio have died of COVID-19, the third high­est total in the nation behind Florida and Texas. 

A sim­i­lar out­break has infect­ed at least 11 death-row pris­on­ers in Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Tennessee. Donald Middlebrooks was the first death-row pris­on­er to test pos­i­tive for the virus at the Riverbend facil­i­ty. His lawyers have argued that ​“a well-doc­u­ment­ed con­stel­la­tion of seri­ous, debil­i­tat­ing psy­chi­atric and med­ical dis­eases” make him incom­pe­tent to be exe­cut­ed. Pervis Payne test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus short­ly after being grant­ed a reprieve by Governor Bill Lee of his sched­uled December 3 exe­cu­tion. Lee said at the time that he had issued the reprieve because of ​“the chal­lenges and dis­rup­tions” caused by the pan­dem­ic. His exe­cu­tion was the eleventh in the coun­try — four in Tennessee and sev­en in Texas — to be delayed because of con­cerns relat­ed to the pandemic.

The prison out­breaks occurred as a series of sched­uled fed­er­al exe­cu­tions appeared to be con­tribut­ing to the virus’ spread. Yusuf Ahmed Nur, a University of Indiana pro­fes­sor who admin­is­tered last rites to fed­er­al death row inmate Orlando Hall in the fed­er­al exe­cu­tion cham­ber in Terre Haute, Indiana on November 19, test­ed pos­i­tive for the coro­n­avirus short­ly there­after. Earlier this month, two lawyers for Lisa Montgomery con­tract­ed seri­ous cas­es of COVID-19 fol­low­ing three trips between Tennessee and the Texas fed­er­al prison in which Montgomery is incar­cer­at­ed attempt­ing to pre­pare her peti­tion for clemen­cy from her December 8 sched­uled exe­cu­tion. A fed­er­al dis­trict court in Washington stayed the exe­cu­tion on November 18, find­ing that her lawyers’ ill­ness­es denied Montgomery mean­ing­ful access to the clemen­cy process. The Department of Justice respond­ed on November 23 by resched­ul­ing her exe­cu­tion for January 12, 2021.

Two days lat­er, the ACLU filed suit on behalf of pris­on­ers at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute seek­ing to post­pone all five fed­er­al exe­cu­tions sched­uled for December 2020 and January 2021 until the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has passed. The suit, filed in fed­er­al dis­trict court in Indiana, argues that the exe­cu­tion cre­ate ​“a sig­nif­i­cant risk of seri­ous health com­pli­ca­tions or death” for the pris­on­ers incar­cer­at­ed at the Terre Haute facil­i­ty and that “[t]here is no legit­i­mate jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for hold­ing exe­cu­tions now, at the height of the pandemic.”

The Marshall Project report­ed that, as of December 3, 2020, at least 1,568 pris­on­ers across the United States had died from the coro­n­avirus, more than have been exe­cut­ed in the United States in the entire peri­od since the death penal­ty resumed in the 1970s.