NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Tennessee's corrections chief said Wednesday that the department expects to unveil a new process for executing inmates by the end of the year, signaling a possible end to a yearslong pause due to findings that several inmates were put to death without the proper testing of lethal injection drugs. “We should have our protocols in place by the end of this calendar year or at the first week or two of January,” Commissioner Frank Strada told lawmakers during a correction hearing.
“We’ve been working with the attorney general’s office on writing those protocols to make sure that they’re sound.” Strada didn't reveal any details about the new process, only acknowledging that the effort had taken a long time because of the many lawyers working on the issue to ensure it was “tight and right and within the law.” The commissioner's comments are the first public estimate of when the state may once again resume executing death row inmates since they were halted in early 2022.
Back then, Republican Gov. Bill Lee put a hold on executions after acknowledging the state had failed to ensure its lethal injection drugs were properly tested. The oversight forced Lee in April to abruptly halt the execution of Oscar Smith an hour before he was to have been put to death.
Documents obtained through a public records request later showed that at least two people knew the night before that the lethal injection drugs the state planned to use hadn’t undergone some r.
