Attorneys for two Tennessee inmates facing execution this year asked Gov. Bill Lee on Thursday to declare a reprieve until a judge determines the legality of the state’s new execution protocol.
Executions have been on hold in Tennessee since April 2022, when Lee halted the execution of Oscar Smith just an hour before it was to be carried out, citing an “oversight” in the preparations. He later revealed that a required purity test for the execution drugs to be used on Smith had never been done.
