The Tennessee Supreme Court has set exe­cu­tion dates for six men on the state’s death row, sched­ul­ing their exe­cu­tions for between May 16, 2019 and April 9, 2020. This mass exe­cu­tion sched­ule, issued on November 16, 2018, comes in the wake of the con­tro­ver­sial exe­cu­tions of Billy Ray Irick and Edmund Zagorski ear­li­er this year and as the state pre­pares to exe­cute David Earl Miller on December 6. If all sev­en sched­uled exe­cu­tions take place, Tennessee will have con­duct­ed more exe­cu­tions in a two-year peri­od than it had in the rest of the 45-year mod­ern era of the death penalty.

Prior to Irick’s August 9, 2018 exe­cu­tion, Tennessee had car­ried out only six exe­cu­tions since bring­ing back the death penal­ty in February 1974, all of them between 2000 and 2009. Tennessee’s exe­cu­tion method and the state supreme court’s han­dling of lethal-injec­tion lit­i­ga­tion has come under crit­i­cism, as a new­ly con­sti­tut­ed con­ser­v­a­tive court major­i­ty per­mit­ted prison offi­cials to refuse to pro­vide evi­dence of their claimed efforts to obtain an alter­na­tive exe­cu­tion drug, expe­dit­ed its con­sid­er­a­tion of death-row state pris­on­ers’ chal­lenge to the state three-drug lethal-injec­tion pro­to­col to facil­i­tate Zagorski’s exe­cu­tion, and refused to con­sid­er med­ical evi­dence con­cern­ing Irick’s report­ed­ly torturous execution.

Irick was exe­cut­ed over scathing dis­sents from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who called it ​“bar­barism,” and Tennessee Supreme Court Justice Sharon Lee, who crit­i­cized the state’s ​“rush to exe­cute” and said that the state’s eva­sion of ques­tions con­cern­ing the avail­abil­i­ty of pen­to­bar­bi­tal as an alter­na­tive to exe­cu­tion with the state’s three-drug for­mu­la had ren­dered the tri­al court pro­ceed­ings in the case ​“mean­ing­less.” Lee lat­er blast­ed the ​“rock­et dock­et” cre­at­ed by the court’s removal of the pris­on­ers’ lethal-injec­tion chal­lenge from an inter­me­di­ate appeals court so the high court could decide the case before Zagorski’s sched­uled exe­cu­tion. ​“Given the grav­i­ty of the issues pre­sent­ed in this appeal, the volu­mi­nous record to be reviewed, and the legal analy­sis to be made, the [court’s] super-expe­dit­ed sched­ule is whol­ly inad­e­quate,” she wrote.

Autopsy reports from Irick’s exe­cu­tion became avail­able after the court estab­lished its expe­dit­ed sched­ule. Edmund Zagorski’s defense lawyers then pro­vid­ed the court with an affi­davit from a promi­nent med­ical expert who con­clud­ed that Irick had not been prop­er­ly anes­thetized, leav­ing him ​“aware and sen­sate dur­ing his exe­cu­tion.” Irick ​“would have expe­ri­enced the feel­ing of chok­ing, drown­ing in his own flu­ids, suf­fo­cat­ing, being buried alive, and the burn­ing sen­sa­tion caused by the injec­tion of the potas­si­um chlo­ride,” the doc­tor wrote. After hear­ing argu­ment, the court refused to con­sid­er that med­ical evi­dence and upheld the exe­cu­tion pro­to­col. Zagorski then opt­ed to be exe­cut­ed by elec­tro­cu­tion. His attor­ney said of the deci­sion, “[Tennessee] has coerced Mr. Zagorski — with the threat of extreme chem­i­cal tor­ture via a bar­bar­ic three-drug lethal injec­tion pro­to­col — to choose to die a painful and grue­some death in the elec­tric chair.” The day before the new exe­cu­tion dates were announced, a fed­er­al judge denied a stay request from David Earl Miller, who had sought exe­cu­tion by fir­ing squad as an alter­na­tive to the three-drug lethal injection.

(Anita Wadhwani, Tennessee Supreme Court sets 6 exe­cu­tion dates in next two years, The Tennessean, November 16, 2018; David Boucher, Tennessee Supreme Court jus­tice rips ​‘rock­et dock­et’ in lethal injec­tion appeal, The Tennessean, August 14, 2018; Jamie Satterfield, First con­ser­v­a­tive TN Supreme Court in decades changed rule, paving way for Irick exe­cu­tion, Knoxville News Sentinel, August 9, 2018; Robin Konrad, Behind the Curtain: Secrecy and the Death Penalty in the United States, Death Penalty Information Center, November 20, 2018.) See Tennessee, Lethal Injection, and Upcoming Executions.

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