New data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) shows that the majority of the hate crimes in Tennessee from 2022 were on the basis of race and ethnicity. The report also found that most of these crimes targeted Black people.
The FBI said that the data comes from voluntary reporting to the organization through the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). Out of 413 participating Tennessee law enforcement agencies, 399 of them submitted data.
A hate crime is defined by the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program as “a committed criminal offense which is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender’s bias(es) against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.”
“Hate crimes are often committed based on differences in personal characteristics such as appearance, language, nationality or religion,” said the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI). “The key element of any hate crime is the presence of a bias motivation. The criminal act alone does not define a hate crime; rather the investigation of the crime must conclude that the offender was bias-motivated.”
Out of the 94 reported crimes. 43 were considered “Anti-Black or African American.” The second highest category were “Anti-White” crimes, with 10 being reported.
The first year that hate crimes were reported entirely through the NIBRS was in 2021. According to data from that year, most of Tennessee’s crimes were motivated by race and ethnicity, accounting for 91 (61.9 percent) incidents.
The FBI also notes that since crime is a “sociological phenomenon influenced by a variety of factors,” and that there are differing levels of participation over time, they discourage using data as a way to measure law enforcement effectiveness.
Nationally, there were 11, 643 hate crime incidents reported in 2022. The report also notes that only 14,660 law enforcement agencies participated in crime reporting, out of more than 18,800 nation-wide. The Southern Poverty Law Center notes that this is the “fifth consecutive year of declining participation.”
In an introduction to a recently published book on political scandals in Tennessee, former Governor Bill Haslam opines: “Scandals can have a lot of results. I hope this book can be a reminder that good government matters and that good government starts with politicians who are more concerned about the people they serve than serving their own political ends.”
To be honest, one of the results of scandals is that they don’t just shock. They entertain. And that is certainly one of the reasons for reading Welcome to Capitol Hill: 50 Years of Scandal in Tennessee Politics by two veteran statehouse reporters, Joel Ebert and Erik Schelzig.
Ebert’s coverage was for The Tennessean newspaper of Nashville (he has since moved on to a post at the The University of Chicago Institute of Politics). Schelzig toiled for the Associated Press, and for the last several seasons he has been editor of the Tennessee Journal, a well-respected weekly newsletter about politics and government in the state.
Though Nashville-based for their journalism, the two authors pay considerable attention in their volume to political personalities from our own end of the state — several of whom, as perpetrators or as observers, had much to do with the various misfirings and misdeeds reported on in the book.
An early section of the book is a list of “Cast of Characters” to be encountered in the volume. I suppose I’m more pleased than otherwise to find my own name to be listed there — basically because my journalism over the years put me in contact with many of the people and events featured in the volume.
There is, for example, the following quote derived from an erstwhile interview I did with former state Senator John Ford of Memphis, who is the central figure in the authors’ chapter entitled “John Ford and the Tennessee Waltz.”
Said the senator regarding a piece of relatively mild ethics-reform legislation that had just been passed by the legislature: “There’s conflict of interest, and there’s illegal. These crazy-assed rules and everything? Shit, I won’t be able to make a living.”
It is a matter of record that Ford, known for a fast temper and faster driving, and for having a hand, for better and for worse, in beaucoup legislation, ended up doing time for having received upwards of $10,000 from FBI agents masquerading as lobbyists working for a computer firm that ostensibly needed an enabling bill passed. He and several other legislators from Memphis were netted in a sting code-named “Tennessee Waltz” by the feds.
That chapter and several other others remind one of the old saw about truth being stranger than fiction. Indeed, the book as a whole is fast-paced and novelistic.
Baby boomers will surely remember and be regaled by the authors’ account of the late Governor Ray Blanton, who was discovered to be, not so secretly, profiting from the outright sale of pardons to convicted murderers and other felons willing to pay for a “Get Out of Jail” card. Things got so ugly that other major figures in state government contrived to get Blanton’s elected successor, Lamar Alexander, installed earlier than his scheduled inauguration date.
Of more recent vintage — and adequately covered in the book — were such sagas as those of state Rep. Jeremy Durham of upscale Franklin, whose predatory womanzing resulted in his being expelled from the legislature, and of Shelby County’s own Brian Kelsey, whose illegal shuffling of campaign funds resulted in a federal indictment and conviction, and a prison sentence that the once-renowned “stunt-baby of Germantown” is still, even as we speak, trying, Trump-like, to get postponed to some future-tense time.
And there is, as they say in ad-speak, More, More, More. The book (296 pages, Vanderbilt University Press) can be snagged for $24.99 from Amazon, or $14.99 for a Kindle edition.
Tourism topped a record-breaking $4 billion in spending in Shelby County last year, up from 2021, and enough to rank second in spending among Tennessee’s 95 counties.
These are the finalized figures from U.S. Travel and Tourism Economics and released recently by the Tennessee Department of Tourism Development (TDTD). The report shows spending here rose 16 percent from 2021’s spend of $3.4 billion to just over $4 billion. The new figure showed growth over 2019’s pre-pandemic activity when tourists spent more than $3.7 billion in Shelby County.
Credit: State of Tennessee
Visitor spending in Shelby County brought more than $391.8 million to state and local tax coffers. State officials said without this tourism money, each Shelby County household would pay $1,105 more in state and local taxes. Tourism spending also supported 27,745 jobs here.
What did visitors buy here? Food and beverage topped the list with more than $1.3 billion spent. Transportation ($956.7 million), accommodations ($669.5 million), recreation ($566.1 million), and retail ($490.6 million) rounded out the top five spending categories.
Credit: State of Tennessee
About 141 million people visited Tennessee last year and spent around $29 billion, a figure higher than the preliminary report issued earlier this year.
“Tennessee is thriving as tourism is soaring,” said Mark Ezell, TDTD Commissioner. “Our industry’s hard work is paying off with record levels of visitor spending and significantly outpacing inflation.”
Shelby County ranked second to Davidson County in spending last year. Nashville saw tourist spending rise 35 percent from 2021 to a record $9.9 billion.
A new study by the nonpartisan Sycamore Institute found gun-related deaths in Tennessee rose to a record high in 2021, and they grew faster for children and Black Tennesseans.
The Tennessee-based policy center said guns killed 1,569 people in Tennessee in 2021, according to the latest data available. Suicides counted for more than half (52 percent) of those. Of homicides, guns were the leading cause of death for those aged 1 to 18. The rate of gun-related deaths of Black Tennesseans was almost three times higher than that of whites.
Here’s a breakdown of the rest of Sycamore Institute’s findings in their own charts:
Tennessee lawmakers and legal officials are adding their voices to a growing chorus of leaders interested in regulating artificial intelligence (AI) as the revolutionary technology begins to take hold in the state.
Many internet users have by now dipped a toe in AI programs. The Flyer recently asked a text-to-image AI generator to create a photo of “Memphis in the future” (results below). We’ve also asked ChatGPT, so far the most user-friendly and low-barrier AI program, to “write a news story about Memphis.” Turns out, that phrase was too vague, and the program basically spit out the city’s Wikipedia page.
Memphis Flyer via Diffusion Bee
However, ABC24 reporters got a better response in May when they asked a specific question: What should Memphis do to improve its crime problems? The program said city leaders should focus on community policing, building better trust relationships with police officers, investing money in programs that get at the root of crime, and youth development programs like early childhood education.
However, AI leaders from all over the world issued a dire warning about the technology last month. That warning (maybe even in its succinctness) made headlines across the globe and seemed to rattle leaders.
“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” reads the statement housed at the website for the Center for AI Safety.
If that doesn’t hit home, maybe you’re the kind of person to consider a dire warning from another … expert: Joe Rogan. He warned of AI’s power and influence when someone used ChatGPT to make a real-sounding but totally fake episode of his controversial podcast The Joe Rogan Experience last month.
It seems, AI has moved from the pages of comic books and sci-fi novels, to laboratories and to early adopters, and to Main Street internet pretty quickly. And lawmakers are trying now to get a handle on it.
Last month, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) worried that such programs could be used to create real-sounding but totally fake versions of country songs. She told Fox News that ChatGPT “pulls it right up, and then you can lay in that voice. Give me a voice that sounds like Garth Brooks. Give me a voice that sounds like Reba McEntire singing.” The idea could have major implications for Nashville’s — and the state’s — music industry.
Blackburn expressed concern this week that governments could use AI “to further their surveillance operations.”
“I’ve watched what has happened in China and how they are using AI to grow the surveillance state,” Blackburn said. “They’re very aggressive in this, and we know that they have used it.”
In Nashville this week, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti urged the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to create governance policies for AI, especially as it “is developed or used to make decisions that result in legal or other significant effects on people.” Of special concern to the AG (and the other AGs who signed a letter this week) was the use of sensitive data like medical information, biometric data, or personal information about children in AI and the possible outputs from it, like deepfakes.
“For example, consumers must be told when they are interacting with an AI rather than a human being and whether the risks of using an AI system are negligible or considerable,” reads the letter.
That letter says any governance shouldn’t dampen innovation in the AI space, however. This is about the same as legislators said about the internet when it became more widely available.
That innovation in AI has already started to spread across Tennessee and in Memphis. For example, the University of Memphis’ Institute for Intelligent Systems lists more than 20 AI projects underway at the school.
One project, AutoTutor, “is a computer tutor that helps students learn by holding a conversation in natural language.” That project has won nearly $5 million in research grants from the federal government. Another project, Personal Assistant for Life Long Learning (PAL3), will guide new Navy sailors in performing their mission essential shipboard duties. The Memphis portion funding this project is $400,000.
Further east, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the federally funded research and development lab in East Tennessee, launched the Artificial Intelligence Initiative to help its scientists use AI to accelerate their discoveries. Further east in Knoxville, the University of Tennessee launched the $1-million AI Tennessee Initiative in March to fund researchers to use AI in “smart manufacturing, climate-smart agriculture and forestry, precision health and environment, future mobility, and AI for science.”
The number of hate groups operating in the Memphis area was cut in half over the last two years, according to a new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
Each year, the Montgomery, Alabama-based SPLC issues its Year In Hate and Extremism report, which details hate groups and anti-government extremist groups operating across the U.S. This year’s report found a total of 1,225 active groups (in both categories combined) in the U.S., up slightly from the 1,221 groups active in 2021.
The number of hate groups fell for the fourth year in a row in 2022. A record number of such groups (1,020) was recorded in 2018. This fell to 733 in 2021 and to 523 in the 2022 report. However, the number of anti-government groups rose. The number of such groups totaled 566 in 2020, fell to 488 in 2021, but rose steeply to 702 in the 2022 report.
”This report clearly shows the impact of these groups and hard-right figures in the mainstream and on Main Street, demonstrating the growing harm and threat they pose to individuals, communities and democracy itself,” reads the report.
The SPLC researchers noted that hate groups, “extremist activists,” and the Republican Party had become “increasingly intertwined since Donald Trump’s presidency began.”
“Republican politicians now mingle freely with members of the organized white nationalist movement and employ their rhetoric more freely than at any other time in recent American history,” reads the report, citing Trump’s dinner with anti-semitic rapper Ye and a GOP gala in New York that included a Pizzagate theorist and many white nationalists.
The Southern Poverty Law Center tracked 33 groups in Tennessee. I Credit: Southern Poverty Law Center.
In Memphis, four groups made the SPLC’s annual report. That’s down from the eight groups reported in 2020.
Gone from the report this year four are Black nationalist groups — Great Millstone, Israel United in Christ, Nation of Islam, and the New Black Panther Party for Islam. The SPLC said “Black nationalists typically oppose integration and racial intermarriage, and they want separate institutions — or even a separate nation — for blacks.” The groups are also ”anti-white and antisemitic,” the group said. No reason was given as to why these groups were not listed in this year’s report.
Also gone from this year’s report is Confederate 901, a seemingly inactive group that surfaced in 2017. Its leaders were opposed to the removal of Confederate statues in Memphis, especially the former Nathan Bedford Forrest statue in what is now Health Sciences Park. The group organized a protest rally in 2018 that brought a rolling convoy of supporters to the roads around Memphis.
A Patriot sent us this picture of their convoy coming from NC!!! SAFE TRAVELS guys see y'all soon. pic.twitter.com/p5ETyLJ5JA
The local Moms for Liberty group says it is “dedicated to the survival of America by unifying, educating and empowering parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government.” Jennifer Martin is listed as the county chapter chair on the national group’s website.
Credit: Moms for Liberty Shelby County via Facebook
The local Proud Boys group also made the list. The group’s profile rose last year as they counter-protested a pro-choice rally here.
The West Tennessee Proud Boys website shows a photo of the group marching on Beale Street and tells its members to “walk your streets with your head held high.” An obviously fake Memphis address is listed as “Freedom Street, Memphis, TN 38503.” The ZIP Code is for Cookeville, Tennessee.
In its website’s “Beliefs” section, the local Proud Boys say they are “are proud Western Chauvinists who refuse to apologize for creating the modern world.” They say they want small government, freedom of speech, closed borders, the right to bear arms, to “venerate the housewife,” and more.
On racism, the Proud Boys site says it ”may be alive, but it is not well” as “progress has been made in overcoming racial prejudice.” With that, they don’t want “anti-racial guilt.” … “Let no man be burdened with shame for the deeds of his ancestors,” reads the site. “Let no people be held accountable for things they never did.”
The site also offers a portal to join the group. Another button, for complaints, takes a visitor to a YouTube video featuring a tune called “The You Are A Cunt Song.”
Two Bartlett radio stations also made the SPLC’s list this year, as they have for years. Blood River Radio believes “genocide is being pursued against white gentile people of the world.” The Political Cesspool hosts have said “we represent a philosophy that is pro-white and are against political centralization.”
Read more about those stations in a previous story here. Read an in-depth look at them, their hosts, and their guests from the SPLC blog here. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation issued its annual report on hate crimes in the state earlier this year. Read our story on it here.
Deputy Commissioner Eve Carney has been a fixture at the Tennessee Department of Education since 2008. Marta W. Aldrich / Chalkbeat
The leadership transition at the Tennessee Department of Education accelerated this week with the resignations of two high-level officials, including a veteran manager responsible for many of the state’s biggest education programs and initiatives.
Deputy Commissioner Eve Carney will step down on June 30th, a department spokesperson confirmed Monday.
The departure of Meghan McLeroy, the department’s chief officer responsible for supporting schools and districts statewide, is effective August 1st, the spokesperson said.
A staff member with the department since 2008, Carney currently oversees state-level work involving federal programs, school choice, testing, accountability, school improvement, and the state-run Achievement School District for low-performing schools. She is among the deepest wells of institutional knowledge within the department.
Carney — who is one of four remaining members from Schwinn’s original cabinet — was expected to play a key role in helping Reynolds as the new commissioner from Texas faces myriad challenges.
The state also is scheduled to start giving A-to-F grades to its 1,700-plus public schools this fall after delaying the new accountability policy for five years because of testing and data disruptions, most recently caused by the pandemic.
A former Tennessee high school teacher and former chief of districts and schools for the department, Carney became Schwinn’s go-to manager to oversee high-level, high-profile programs.
Carney was viewed as a possible successor to Schwinn, especially after Chiefs for Change, a national network of education leaders, named her in January to its latest cohort of “future chiefs,” considered a springboard for administrators seeking top jobs.
But in May, when Schwinn announced plans to step down at the end of the school year, Gov. Bill Lee went out of state to find his new education chief. Reynolds has political and policy experience in Texas and Washington, D.C., and most recently oversaw policy for the advocacy group ExcelinEd, founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
Lee also named Sam Pearcy, the department’s deputy commissioner of operations, to serve as interim education commissioner until Reynolds’ arrival. Pearcy was sworn in on June 2nd, after Schwinn’s last day on June 1, said department spokesperson Brian Blackley.
McLeroy, another early member of Schwinn’s cabinet, has been with the department since 2011. She also initially helped to lead the state’s Race to the Top work.
The department plans to reassign Carney’s and McLeroy’s responsibilities to existing staff by the end of June, Blackley said.
Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
Tennessee travel spending hit a record-breaking $27.5 billion in 2022, state leaders announced recently.
The feat is according to preliminary data released by U.S. Travel and Tourism Economics. The new data put Tennessee in the top 25 states for travel spending. Tennessee also rose from 14th place in 2020 to 11th in the ranking for 2021 and 2022.
U.S. Travel and Tourism Economics
“Tennessee’s tourism, leisure, and hospitality industry is leading the nation, and we are grateful to our hardworking industry for making these historic new milestones possible,” said Tennessee Department of Tourist Development Commissioner Mark Ezell. “Visitors come for our incredible scenic beauty, dining, and world-class attractions, and keep coming back for our unmatched hospitality. There’s nowhere better to live, work, and play than Tennessee.”
The leisure and hospitality industry employs more than 352,000 Tennesseans. Tourism is the state’s second-largest industry and contributed $1.8 billion to the state coffers last year.
Countywide data on tourism is due from the company in August. However, the firm’s latest data for the Memphis area said visitors spent $2.6 billion here in 2019.
A Memphis Tourism and Greater Memphis Chamber report released in August 2022 said tourism jobs in Memphis had returned to pre-pandemic levels and that the industry had made a “full recovery.” That report said tourists spent $3.4 billion here in 2021.
Litter on Tennessee roadways decreased since 2016 and while Memphis appears to be most littered city here, West Tennessee was the least.
All of this is according to a new litter report from Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) and Keep Tennessee Beautiful (KTNB). That report, called the 2022 Tennessee Statewide Litter Study, found that litter along interstates, U.S. highways, state highways, and local roads decreased by about 12 percent over the last six years.
Credit: Tennessee Department of Transportation
However, the figure is still staggering. The report said that 88.5 million pieces of litter (larger than four inches) exist on Tennessee roadsides at any give time, down from 100 million in 2016. And these are only pieces of littler that are four inches or longer, visible to passersby. The report found about 679.7 million pieces of litter that were four inches or smaller and may not be visible on roads.
For the study, a team identified 120 locations across the state, split evenly between each Grand Division, road types, and rural and urban areas. Two-person teams armed with computer tablets visited the sites and counted the litter there.
Credit: Tennessee Department of Transportation
In Memphis, teams visited spots along I-40, I-55, Elvis Presley Blvd., New Tchulahoma Road, Thomas, Lamar, 385, and Riverdale. The study does not specifically call out Memphis as the most littered. However, a heat map of litter in it certainly seems to prove the fact.
Credit: Tennessee Department of Transportation
While not discussed in detail, another chart in the study shows that West Tennessee had the least amounts of litter along its roads.
Credit: Tennessee Department of Transportation
Plastic products remained the most-littered items along Tennessee’s roads. The report found nearly 285 million plastic items, comprising more than 37 percent of the state’s total litter in 2022. That’s up slightly from more than 35.6 percent in 2020. The biggest offenders were plastic bottles: water bottles, juice/tea/sports drinks bottles, and soda bottles in that order.
Credit: Tennessee Department of Transportation
”Plastic product types, recycling processes, and secondary market changes have significantly impacted how plastic materials are handled, both in Tennessee and nationally, since 2016,” reads the report, albeit vaguely. “This may contribute to plastics composing more than one third of the total materials on Tennessee roadways.”
Paper products followed plastic. Researchers found more than 165 million pieces of paper litter in the study. Paper comprised 21.5 percent of all littler found in the study, up from 18 percent found in 2020. The biggest offender in the group was the generic “other paper” category, which was 16 percent of the paper litter. While it’s not known what products are there, what’s not there are fast food items, napkins, paper bags, junk mail, newspapers, receipts, and other products that had their own categories. One uptick, though, was in cardboard products for what the study called “the Amazon Effect.”
Cigarette-butt litter was cut nearly in half between 2020 and 2022, according to the report. While butts were nearly a quarter of all littler in 2020 (24 percent), they comprised only about 13 percent of litters last year.
Credit: Tennessee Department of Transportation
This may be explained, in part, to the changes in tobacco usage over time (e.g.,increase usage of vape pens) and less need to dispose of cigarette butts on the larger roadways,” reads the report.
Butt litter saw massive decreases along interstates and U.S. highways but remained steady on state highways and local roads. Also, researchers still found plenty of cigarette and cigar butts out there, nearly 98 million of them.
Tennessee Republicans want to start killing the state’s death row inmates again, enough so they want to bring in firing squads and “hanging by a tree.”
Executions in Tennessee are now halted, hamstrung on scientific protocols for lethal injections. An execution set to go ahead last year came nail-bitingly close before the governor issued a last-minute reprieve. When the truth finally surfaced, state officials admitted they did not follow their own rules to safely carry out the execution (and others).
Governor Bill Lee wanted to know why. The report he ordered came back right before Christmas. And it was hot. The findings were big enough and bad enough to halt all executions — including those by electrocution — in the state and to see two top officials fired. It also put the Tennessee process for lethal injections under review and repair.
Tennessee death row inmates with pending executions. (Photos: TDOC)
While that method is on hold, GOP members of the Tennessee General Assembly have spent part of this year’s session casting about for alternatives. Both the firing squad and hanging methods of execution they’ve suggested made headlines this session. The “hanging” notion never really received any serious consideration and came with a rare GOP apology on its harshness. Even though the firing squad idea seems harsh, too, that idea gained serious traction and continued to move through the Senate committee system as late as last week.
Another GOP bill sought transparency in the lethal injection system, making public the names of the companies that make Tennessee’s lethal injection drugs. Those names are now confidential via a special request by the Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) a few years ago.
Lawmakers don’t often champion government transparency, especially when private companies are in the mix. And with this bill, transparency seemed secondary. The bill sponsor said if his bill could help fix the execution system, then executions could continue, hopefully without hiccups like last year’s that made victims’ families “wait for their day of justice to come.”
Attitudes on the death penalty in general were expectedly divided during the session. Many Democrats lambasted the method as inhumane and questioned GOP bill-carriers to see if they felt the same way at all. They didn’t. They said so. Further, some even said they didn’t care if an inmate felt pain while they were being executed.
Most of the Republican discussion on the bills focused on the cogs and wheels the state needed to adjust in order to get its death penalty process back in working order. However, lawmakers in some of those talks found dark places, sometimes describing macabre scenes as they plumbed the itchy intrigue of execution’s nitty-gritty.
For now, though, the future of state-conducted death is unclear in Tennessee. Lee’s administration works in the background to get the lethal injection process in line and on line. In the foreground, GOP lawmakers push for new ways to get it done. On death row, inmates live another uncertain day.
Oscar Franklin Smith, the oldest person on Tennessee’s death row at 73, has had his execution temporarily reprieved. (Photo: TDOC)
“Sorry, I didn’t have it tested.”
The man asked for a double bacon cheeseburger, deep-dish apple pie, and vanilla bean ice cream. TDOC issued a statement on it.
This was April 20, 2022. Death row inmate Oscar Franklin Smith’s time had come. The Tennessee Supreme Court originally set his execution date for June 2020. Court motions by his lawyers set the date back one year to February 2021. That execution was stayed as Covid paused all executions in the state. When the pandemic suspension lifted in 2022, the warden at Riverbend Maximum Security Prison, home to Tennessee’s death row, was to alert Smith by April 7th that he had two weeks to live.
Smith, 73, was and is the oldest person on Tennessee’s death row. A recent mugshot shows it. He’s bald with shop-teacher glasses and a white beard that flows over pens and pencils in his shirt pocket to his chest.
In 1989, officials say Smith murdered his estranged wife, Judy Robirds Smith, and her two sons, Chad and Jason, who were 13 and 16 at the time. According to accounts from The Tennesseean, Judy was shot in the neck and stabbed several times. Chad was shot in the left eye, upper chest, and left torso. Jason was stabbed in the neck and abdomen.
A 911 call from the night was presented at trial. In it, the boys are heard crying out, “Frank, no! God help me!” A bloody handprint, identified as Smith’s, was found on the bedsheet next to his wife’s body, according to The Tennessean.
Smith was convicted of the murders in 1990. He’s been in state custody for 32 years.
Smith was moved to death watch last year at 11:50 p.m., April 18th, a Monday. He’d spend the next three days under constant surveillance in a cell adjacent to the execution chamber. On Thursday at 4:12 p.m., he was given his last meal — the burger, pie, and ice cream. A statement from the state said he received it but did not say if he ate it.
The lethal injection chemicals made for his execution had arrived at Riverbend the previous week, according to the report Lee ordered last year. That week, TDOC officials trained for the execution. On April 20th, a Wednesday, the lethal injection chemicals for Smith were moved to a refrigerator to thaw.
That day, Smith’s attorney, veteran death penalty lawyer Kelley Henry, asked TDOC if the chemicals had been tested for “strength, sterility, stability, potency, and presence of endotoxins” and requested a copy of the results. These tests are mandatory by rules established by Tennessee lawmakers in 2018 to ensure safe executions. The tests are important to ensure the drugs were manufactured correctly and because endotoxins can cause fever, septic shock, organ failure, or death.
TDOC asked the “drug procurer” (the name kept secret under state law) about the tests who, in turn, asked the “pharmacist.”
“No endotoxin test, it’s a different test but based on [federal pharmacy laws] the amount we make isn’t required,” they texted in response. “Is the endotoxin test requested? Sorry, I didn’t have it tested.”
With this, the governor’s report says, “at least one TDOC employee was aware that no endotoxin testing had been conducted on the drugs on the day before Smith’s execution.”
The next morning began with more text messages between the state and the pharmacy.
“Does [redacted] still have the samples?” read one text. “Could they do an endotoxin test this morning/today?”
“Honestly doubt it,” the pharmacy replied. “I would’ve had to send extra product for them to test it.”
The TDOC team readied for the execution — set for 7 p.m. — amid ongoing discussions about the testing between its office, Lee’s office, and the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office. If the drugs had not been tested for endotoxins, TDOC would have to ask Lee for a reprieve.
At a 1:30 p.m. meeting, the pharmacist said chemicals for Smith’s execution were not tested for endotoxins. The procurer called it an “oversight.” With this, TDOC and the AG recommended the reprieve.
While a decision was being made, everything for the execution was still in motion. The TDOC staff were taking their places for the execution. The victims’ families and the media were being moved to the facility. At 4:30 p.m., the drug procurer and executioner removed the chemicals from the refrigerator and moved it to the execution chamber. At 5:30 p.m., the execution team prepared the syringes.
At 5:45 p.m., TDOC learned the governor would issue a reprieve. And then the warden told Smith. Setup for the execution was halted at 5:51 p.m. with work partially complete on the first drug.
“We are preserving everything,” reads a TDOC text from 6:36 p.m. “So don’t throw anything away or alter any stuff.”
The next day, the pharmacist said drugs used in two previous TDOC executions (Donnie Edward Johnsonand Billy Ray Irick) had not been tested for endotoxins and they had never been asked to test for them. The pharmacist did not know that such testing was even part of Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol and investigators said a copy of the protocols had never been given to them.
On May 2nd, Lee announced a halt on all executions and hired former U.S. Attorney Ed Stanton to conduct a third-party review of Tennessee’s execution process.
“TDOC leadership placed an inordinate amount of responsibility on the Drug Procurer without providing much, if any, guidance, help, or assistance,” reads the report. “Instead, TDOC leadership viewed the lethal injection process through a tunnel-vision, result-oriented lens rather than provide the necessary guidance and counsel to ensure that Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol was thorough, consistent, and followed.”
In December — the day before the report became public — Lee fired Debbie Inglis, TDOC’s deputy commissioner and general counsel, and Kelly Young, the inspector general, in connection with the report’s findings. In January 2023, Lee picked Frank Strada to lead the department. Many believed Strada was hired to fix the execution system after he’d helped Arizona restart its program after an eight-year pause.
“That is not cool.”
Three weeks into the Tennessee General Assembly’s current session, bills were filed in the House and Senate giving the state’s death row inmates a new option for execution. A firing squad “just simply gives them that option,” according to Rep. Dennis Powers (R-Jacksboro), the bill’s sponsor.
During his many appearances before committees to explain and defend his bill, Powers has maintained that a firing-squad death is the “most humane and most effective way to do it,” with “it” apparently meaning to kill a Tennessee death row inmate. He says, according to a survey (that he has never shown in committee meetings), inmates prefer the firing squad.
When pressed on whether or not Tennessee should use the death penalty, Powers would fall back to a three-pronged argument: Capital punishment is legal in Tennessee, it’s not unconstitutional, and neither is his bill. He then leans in on the fact that executions are halted because of all the troubles given in Tennessee’s lethal injection protocols.
In the hearings, Powers was seemingly straightforward on the fact that killing a prisoner with a firing squad isn’t a harsh, outmoded (or even edgy-cool) method of execution. It is “not like the old Westerns when they stand up and put … a blindfold on and they’re standing there and they give them a cigarette or something.”
Other lawmakers listened thoughtfully to Powers’ rationale. Then, they’d give in to their curiosity. How would it be done?
In a special facility, Powers said, the inmate would sit in a chair and would be immobilized by some kind of apparatus. Officials would put a target over the inmate’s heart. Families would be invited to watch, as is the case with all executions in the state.
One marksman on the firing squad would shoot a blank so no one would really know who fired the fatal shots. He said other states have had more volunteers help to carry these out than they needed.
In a hearing last week, Sen. Todd Gardenhire’s (R-Chattanooga) curiosity on the matter got a bit dark.
“I’ve read that when somebody tries to commit suicide with a pistol or a shotgun, sometimes they flinch,” Gardenhire said. “They’re pulling the trigger and they just maybe blow half their face off, but they still live.
“I’m only going by what I’ve seen in Western movies. I haven’t ever seen a execution or an execution by a firing squad, you know, you say, ‘Ready, aim, fire!’ What happens if the guy or lady flinches and you don’t kill [them]? Do you reload?”
While professional in explaining the details, Powers has gotten frank about how he feels about inmates being put to death. Rep. G.A. Hardaway (D-Memphis) read depositions to him from other states that said “death by firing squad would not significantly reduce the risk of severe pain.”
“Any type of death … it’s going to be painful,” Powers said. “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.”
This is the same response given by the bill’s Senate sponsor. Last week, Sen. London Lamar (D-Memphis) was tearing the bill apart. A facility would have to be built. It was going to cost way more than the $50,000 fiscal note (maybe $1.5 million). The bill was unconstitutional, and every state that has passed it is in a mess of costly legal proceedings. Finally, she said, it is “morally wrong.”
“Why would we want correctional officers to sit there and point guns at an individual as a form of killing?” Lamar asked. “It’s almost legalized first-degree murder. That is not cool and we do not need to be a state that sits there and allows people to use individuals as if they’re dummies in a gun range.”
She finally asked Sen. Frank Niceley (R-Strawberry Plains), the bill’s sponsor, “You don’t think this is pretty cruel?”
“You don’t know what that person did to that little girl or that little boy or that old man,” Nicely said. “No, it’s not cruel. It’s not cruel at all.”
The bill needed to clear one more hurdle in the Senate as of press time. The House bill cleared the committee system but will not be considered until after a state budget is passed.
“We don’t need to be doing this in secrecy.”
Rep. Justin Lafferty (R-Knoxville) wants the public to know the companies that make the state’s lethal injection drugs and he’s clear about why.
“If the lethal injection protocol had been more transparent, perhaps [Smith’s] last-hour stay would not have happened and the victims’ family would not have had to have gone through all of that and then, again, have to wait for their day of justice to come.”
The transparency issue tripped up some lawmakers considering the bill last week. Won’t that scare off the drug companies who don’t want to be associated with executions? Aren’t these drugs already hard to get? Won’t this open up the companies to get hounded by activists?
Neither journalists nor the FBI could find any documented case of threats to companies by death penalty abolitionists, Deborah Fisher, executive director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, told the committee. The Tennessean found the state’s drug-maker was El Paso-based SureCare Specialty Pharmacy, and Fisher said they’ve not reported any harassment so far. She also said neither Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nevada, nor Utah have such a secrecy “loophole.”
As for getting the drugs for executions, Lafferty relied on cold economics, saying, “If there’s a profit to be had, somebody will find a way to get the product to market.” As for the ultimate reason for his bill, he came to the point.
“If Tennessee wants to continue this as a method of execution, the secrecy around the process should probably come to an end.”
