Records Show Tennessee Officials Have Spent Nearly $600,000 of Taxpayer Funds for Lethal Injection Drugs Since 2017

According to records request­ed by The Tennessean, between 2017 and 2025 the Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) spent near­ly $600,000 of tax­pay­er funds obtain­ing drugs for lethal injec­tion exe­cu­tions. Specific infor­ma­tion about the drugs’ sources and ori­gins remains unknown because of the state’s secre­cy pro­vi­sions. During this time peri­od sev­en exe­cu­tions were car­ried out: five by elec­tro­cu­tion, two by lethal injection.

The TDOC ini­tial­ly refused to respond to The Tennessean’s February 2025 records request for drug invoic­es, cit­ing state secre­cy law that shields infor­ma­tion about the drugs, the drug sup­pli­er and the indi­vid­u­als involved in exe­cu­tions. In response, the news group point­ed to spe­cif­ic lan­guage in the law that per­mits the state to reveal the cost of the drugs, but not the iden­ti­ty of the drug man­u­fac­tur­er. In March 2025, TDOC released to The Tennessean nine high­ly-redact­ed pages, reveal­ing the costs asso­ci­at­ed with each invoice — but no dates, drug quan­ti­ties pur­chased, or drug sources.

The nine invoic­es total $588,169.50, with the sin­gle largest invoice amount­ing to $525,000. One pay­ment for $19,031.28, match­es an August 2018 lethal injec­tion drug invoice pre­vi­ous­ly obtained by The Guardian. In 2018, Tennessee used a three-drug exe­cu­tion pro­to­col begin­ning with mida­zo­lam, fol­lowed by vecuro­ni­um bro­mide and potas­si­um chlo­ride. In December 2024, the state announced a shift in its lethal injec­tion process to a one-drug pro­to­col using pentobarbital.

Since the 2010s, many phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies have refused to pro­vide states with their med­i­cines and drugs for use in exe­cu­tions, and as a result, some states began to pro­cure drugs using less con­ven­tion­al means, turn­ing to over­seas phar­ma­cies and local com­pound­ing phar­ma­cies. This shift towards unreg­u­lat­ed com­pound­ing phar­ma­cies, or as fed­er­al pub­lic defend­er Kelley Henry calls it, the ​“gray mar­ket,” means that depart­ments of cor­rec­tions across the coun­try have spent mil­lions of tax­pay­er dol­lars attempt­ing to secure drugs.

In May 2022 Tennessee Governor Bill Lee halt­ed all exe­cu­tions and called for an ​“inde­pen­dent review” of the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col to address a ​“tech­ni­cal over­sight” that led him to stop Oscar Smith’s exe­cu­tion less than a half-hour before it was sched­uled to be car­ried out in April 2022. Gov. Lee retained for­mer U.S. Attorney Ed Stanton to con­duct a review of Tennessee’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col after cor­rec­tion depart­ment offi­cials failed to test the exe­cu­tion drugs for bac­te­r­i­al endo­tox­ins ahead of Mr. Smith’s sched­uled exe­cu­tion. Mr. Stanton’s inde­pen­dent review, which exam­ined all exe­cu­tions car­ried out in the state between 2018 and 2022, and released in December 2022, found that the same lax over­sight that occurred in the lead up to Mr. Smith’s exe­cu­tion had also occurred in the prepa­ra­tions for the sev­en pre­vi­ous exe­cu­tions. According to Mr. Stanton’s final report, Tennessee’s pre­vi­ous exe­cu­tion pro­to­col required that the drugs be test­ed for poten­cy, steril­i­ty, and endo­tox­in con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, but TDOC repeat­ed­ly vio­lat­ed that require­ment, test­ing for endo­tox­ins in just one of eight pre­pared lethal injection doses.

Documents released with Mr. Stanton’s report indi­cates that in 2017, while the state relied on pen­to­bar­bi­tal for exe­cu­tions, TDOC offi­cials con­sid­ered acquir­ing the drug from a vet­eri­nar­i­an and inter­na­tion­al man­u­fac­tur­ers, but there were logis­ti­cal con­cerns with inter­na­tion­al trans­port. According to the Associated Press, records reveal that Tennessee’s inter­nal review of its exe­cu­tion pro­to­col cost more than $219,000.

A group of nine death row pris­on­ers have filed a law­suit chal­leng­ing Tennessee’s sole use of pen­to­bar­bi­tal in its revised lethal injec­tion pro­to­col, argu­ing it cre­ates a ​“high risk of a tor­tur­ous death.” Earlier this month, the Tennessee Supreme Court sched­uled exe­cu­tion dates for four indi­vid­u­als: Oscar Smith (May 22), Byron Black (August 5), Donald Middlebrooks (September 24), and Harold Nichols (December 11). Mr. Smith and Mr. Black are both par­ties to the law­suit chal­leng­ing the state’s use of pen­to­bar­bi­tal. Tennessee’s last exe­cu­tion was car­ried out in February 2020, with the elec­tro­cu­tion of Nicholas Sutton.

Other states have also spent large sums to acquire lethal injec­tion drugs. A 2021 inves­ti­ga­tion from The Guardian revealed that in 2020, the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation, & Reentry, (ADCRR) spent $1.5 mil­lion on 1,000 vials of pen­to­bar­bi­tal all shipped in ​“unmarked jars and box­es.” In 2015, Arizona spent $27,000 to pro­cure 1,000 vials of sodi­um thiopen­tal to use in exe­cu­tions from a sup­pli­er in India, after domes­tic pro­duc­ers would not sell the drug for exe­cu­tions. The drugs were seized by the US Customs and Border Protection in Phoenix after the Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned ADCRR that the pur­chase was illegal.

In Idaho, pub­lic records reveal the state spent more than $150,000 on lethal injec­tion drugs in its efforts to exe­cute Thomas Creech—$50,000 in October 2023 and $100,000 in June 2024. Recent ren­o­va­tions to the F Block unit at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution to cre­ate an exe­cu­tion prepa­ra­tion room cost an esti­mat­ed $313,915, accord­ing to Idaho Department of Corrections (IDOC) pub­lic infor­ma­tion offi­cer Sanda Kuzeta-Cerimagic. The ren­o­va­tions in the exe­cu­tion room are just the first phase of a two-state ren­o­va­tion. The sec­ond stage includes the cre­ation of a secured facil­i­ty for exe­cu­tions via fir­ing squad, which was adopt­ed as an alter­na­tive method of exe­cu­tion in 2023 and made the pri­ma­ry method of exe­cu­tion in March 2024. Phase two con­struc­tion costs are esti­mat­ed at $952,589, as report­ed by the Idaho Capital Sun.