Two senior officials have been fired after a damming report revealed a state failed to test execution drugs.
Tennessee deputy commissioner and general counsel, Debra Inglis, and inspector general Kelly Young were axed from their jobs on December 27 after an independent report uncovered major errors in the state's lethal injection protocols.
According to the report, multiple executions were carried out without testing of drugs used in the death penalty process.
And when Tennessee changed its lethal injection protocol in 2018 there was no evidence of the state given to the pharmacy in charge of testing the drugs.
In addition, the three drugs used in the state's executions - vecuronium bromide, which is used to paralyse the prisoner, midazolam, used to sedate the person, and potassium chloride, which is used to stop the heart - were not properly tested for endotoxins, a potentially poisonous containment.
In Tennessee there have been seven prisoners executed since 2018 following the near-decade halt in executions.
And out of the seven prisoners, five chose to die in the electric chair while two were administered with lethal injections.
In April last year, the state was forced to stop the execution of death row inmate Oscar Smith just an hour before his execution after the state’s failure to properly adhere to its lethal injection protocol.
The report, which was released in December, said the seven executions since 2018, none of which were lethal injections, were tested for endotoxins.
However, when one prisoner was executed by lethal injection using midazolam, the drug was not tested for its strength, according to the report.
In 2017, a pharmacist warned state correction officials that midazolam “‘does not elicit strong analgesic effects’, meaning ‘[t]he subjects may be able to feel pain from the administration of the second and third drugs’”.
The drug, according to inmate witnesses, causes sensations of panic, drowning, asphyxiation and doom.
The report comes after Alabama's department of corrections botched three of its lethal injections last year.
Officials struggled to find a vein for death row inmate Kenneth Eugene Smith, which left him in agony for hours after their failure to inset an IV line.
Smith was given a stay of execution and it was the second time the state struggled to put an inmate to death.
Alabama's governor was forced order a "top-to-bottom" review of lethal injections following the botched attempts.
