Tennessee won’t be killing death row inmates with a firing squad anytime soon, nor will it get more transparency in its lethal injection process, but Republican lawmakers did see fit this year to take away some powers from local attorneys general in death penalty cases.
Two major bills before the GOP-controlled Tennessee General Assembly focused on the state’s death penalty situation this year, hoping to get state executions back on track. But both of them stalled before the end of session.
As the Memphis Flyer noted in a previous story, executions in Tennessee are now halted, hamstrung on scientific protocols for lethal injections. A report ordered by Governor Bill Lee last year found that Tennessee Department of Corrections (TDOC) officials did not follow their own rules to safely carry out lethal injection executions. Lee paused all executions after the report was published to review and repair the process.
In the meantime, Rep. Dennis Powers (R-Jacksboro) filed a bill that gives death row inmates a new option for execution. A firing squad “just simply gives them that option,” he said in a committee hearing.
Death by firing squad has had a trendy resurgence, especially with conservative lawmakers. Such legislators in five states — Idaho, Utah, South Carolina, Mississippi, and Oklahoma — have approved the method. Utah is the only state to actually use the method recently, though, in 2010. This resurgence is likely due to states’ troubles in acquiring lethal injection drugs as their makers have become more reluctant to associate with the practice.
Tennessee’s troubled lethal injection program was one reason Powers said he brought the bill. In committee meetings, he’d remind legislators that capital punishment is legal in Tennessee, is constitutional, and so was his bill. Asked about the pain associated with the shooting method, Powers said he cared little.
“Any type of death … it’s going to be painful,” he said in one hearing. “The death that they promoted and carried out for another subject was painful, too. So, I don’t have a whole lot of empathy for people that suffer pain during an execution.”
The bill made it to late rounds of the committee system but was ultimately queued up to be heard after the state budget. Lawmakers eager to end the embattled last weeks of this turbulent session left the firing-squad proposal on the table.
However, the bill yielded one concrete action. House leaders stripped Rep. Paul Sherrell (R-Sparta) from his spot on the House Criminal Justice Committee. The move came after Sherrell proposed adding “hanging by a tree” to the firing-squad bill in a committee hearing. The idea was not taken seriously and Sherrell issued a rare GOP apology about his remarks the following day.
Another GOP bill did not advance as far as the firing-squad idea. Rep. Justin Lafferty (R-Knoxville) wanted more transparency in the state’s existing lethal injection system. Specifically, he wanted Tennesseans to know what companies made and supplied the state’s lethal chemicals. Lafferty said he believed more transparency would help ease woes that now trouble the state’s lethal injection process and help get executions back on track.
”If Tennessee wants to continue this as a method of execution, the secrecy around the process should probably come to an end,” he said during a committee review.
However, other GOP lawmakers worried such transparency could scare off some drug companies supplying lethal injection drugs that are already hard to get. The bill was tabled in early March. The group Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (TADP) said TDOC “lobbied hard against it.”
A final GOP bill around the death penalty was approved by lawmakers this year. It gives the Tennessee Attorney General control over post-conviction proceedings in capital cases. That means appeals from convicted murderers for new trials or sentences will now be decided by the state’s AG, not local District Attorneys General, like Shelby County’s Steve Mulroy.
“This sudden move appears to be a response to the choices of voters in both Davidson County and Shelby County, who elected prosecutors to support more restorative and less punitive policies,” reads a statement from TADP.
This bill was sent to Lee for a signature last week. According to the state’s legislative record, he still had not signed the bill as of Tuesday.
