Tennessee execution “has a terrible mistake”: How Byron Black’s killing unfolds | Tennessee

For attorney Kelley Henry, the visible blood was the first sign that her client’s execution was wrong.

Tuesday at 10:15 a.m. in Riverbend Maximum Security Prison in Nashville Tennessee Death-Board Attorney watched as staff members tried to put the IV into Byron Black’s right arm. Black was locked on a Guni, with a black belt crisscrossing on his chest, belly and legs, and Henry saw blood seeping from the injection site.

Henry recalled that the staff managed to insert an IV fluid and clean the wound, but then struggled for about 10 minutes before finding the vein in Black’s second arm.

IV will be used to inject a fatal amount of pentobarbital, a sedative, black, a 69-year-old wheelchair user with lifelong intellectual disability, dementia, brain damage, renal failure, severe heart failure and prostate cancer. The purpose of this drug is to make him unconscious because it stops his breathing and kills him.

“You’re going home,” the mental counselor on the Black side told him, as the fatal injection began.

As the pastor touched Black’s face to comfort him, Black began to breathe and sigh, after a few minutes of painful beating, saying, “I can’t do it,” Henry and several journalists who witnessed the execution said. He raised his head repeatedly.

The singing pastor said, “I am sorry. I only listen to my voice, the Lord is my shepherd.”

Black ended up still and was declared dead at 10:43 am, about 10 minutes later Cried in pain.

Tennessee once believed that black people would not consciously experience the pain of pain. But outside the conference hall, Seven reporters shared Similar accounts Impressed that this is exactly what happened, and finally reporter “It’s consistent to see him in trouble among all of us.”

“It happened a horrible, terrible mistake, and I don’t know what it is yet, all I can do is take notes and watch,” Henry, who represents black man for 25 years, told The Guardian Thursday. “Let him look up his head a few times and say it hurts, I’m really not ready. I can’t believe it’s happening. It’s horrible.”

Henry said she believed she was “100% explosive” and constituted “torture,” and the execution seemed to be the latest in a series of troubled state murders.

Although historically low Public Support For the death penalty, a few conservatives nation Continue to actively pursue executions and safeguard the United States status As Global Leader In the death penalty. Donald Trump 13 federal executions In his first semester Guaranteed to revive the death penaltyreversed Joe Biden’s suspension of federal killings.

Report Executive include 2024 Idaho executions cease After eight attempts to find a deadly injected vein, Alabama used an experimental nitrogen method to kill, which caused “violent” shaking last year. Oklahoma’s fatal injections in 2021 have caused vomiting and twitching. South Carolina appears to have defeated executions through shooting squads, a rarely used method that is rarely used today, with autopsy records showing that shooters missed the target area in the man’s mind.

Tennessee’s correction declined to comment. A spokesperson for Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee did not respond to an email. Lee refused to give black people leniency.

State Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti defended the execution’s defense in a statement: “Every American has a view on the death penalty, but the court relies on actual facts and actual laws, not drama and passion. Black raised twelve separate legal challenges to avoid his judgment.

Black’s apparently incredible death is the last chapter of what his lawyer says is life, and it’s a sign of the challenge.

Fatal loopholes in the law

Black spent 35 years in death row after conviction Homicide case in 1988 His girlfriend Angela Clay, 29, and her two daughters, Latoya, nine, and Lakeisha, six.

Black has maintain His innocence, despite the critical court struggle, spins around his intellectual disability. Nashville Flagreported that Black’s lawyers in 1989 believed he was ineffective in adjourning the trial. His lawyer said he did not know that he had been convicted during the sentencing.

Black suffered from prenatal alcohol exposure and was exposed to toxic lead as a toddler, resulting in lifelong cognitive and developmental disorders. He struggled throughout the school, suffered traumatic brain injuries from playing football, and never lived independently, and had difficulty performing basic chores as an adult.

When Henry first met Black in 2000, she was pregnant with her second son, they formed a connection about the conversation between the family: “Knowing Byron is getting to know his family. He always wanted to talk about his family’s gatherings, which is legendary.” She learned how he had relatives in all 50 states, traced their roots to the ancestors enslaved by President James Polk.

“He always smiled. Talking to him was like sitting on the front porch and having a glass of iced tea,” she said, recalling how he wrote down everyone’s birthday in a temporary calendar and never missed their birthday. He never complained about prison treatment or asked about his case. “I will give him the latest news and his answer has always been very grateful.

Henry is a federal public defender who watches black people deteriorate physically and mentally in death row for twenty years. She said he had been trying to walk for years, but prison staff took him to a legal visit on an office chair and then ended up giving him a wheelchair. She said he was almost dead when the current state cancer surgery went wrong. “Nevertheless, he never said negative things to the doctor.”

nation Acknowledged in 2022 In fact, under the current law, Black is actually a court lawsuit with intellectual disability. The Tennessee Legislature revised the regulations in 2021 to align its definition of mental retardation with contemporary medical standards. Persons who perform black conditions are prohibited.

However, the court ruled that the new law did not apply to him, as Henry’s claim to intellectual disability was considered and rejected by the old standards twenty years ago.

Henry said his execution would be considered illegal if he filed a disability claim for the first time since the 2021 reform.

Henry said it was a procedural loophole, and she said she was rejected for what she originally said and she was responsible for what happened.

“Every execution is all-hearted,” Henry said. Henry represented 13 executions, three of whom witnessed them. “But this guy did a lot of harm… because when I did this, I made the claim of intellectual disability. He was dead. The law was wrong, the law changed, and he couldn’t get the proper procedure. Because we would have proposed it before. I couldn’t reconcile it.”

“I won’t forget you”

Within the weeks of execution, Black’s lawyers raised significant concerns about the procedure, believing that his defibrillator was implanted to regulate his heart disease, responding to the injection by repeatedly shocking him, causing irritation, painful, painful pain. But Tennessee’s Supreme Court allows enforcement continue With the device activated.

Henry said preliminary evaluations of the device after the death of the device showed that it did not shock him.

Black’s lawyers now hope it will take weeks of autopsy, which will help make a clear indication of what’s wrong.

She said that due to problems with intravenous insertion, pentobarbital may enter his muscle tissue, not his vein. The drug may not flow properly due to the tight belt that binds his body, which may also mask the twitch that indicates pain. He may have endured pulmonary edema, and this condition is Others perform by injectionThe lungs are filled with fluid, causing sensation Similar to suffocation and drowning.

Henry said Lack of transparency Near the country’s places to get medicine fear Supply may be subpotential, improper storage or other problems.

Attorneys in the state believe that the five-leaf tree should make people unresponsive, and Unable to perceive painBut Black repeatedly raised his head as he groaned in pain, and also suggested.

Attorney General Skrmetti said in a statement that the defibrillator is not shocking black people “as medical experts in the state predicted.” He also condemned criticism of the drug, saying in previous lawsuits, Black’s lawyers argued that the pentagon had a lower risk of pain compared to other lethal injections.

Nine days before the execution, Henry had to explain to Black that she had exhausted her choice to save him. “He grabbed me, really, really, really, really, really, really, tightly holding me, ‘I want you to know what you do is important.'” she recalled.

Black did not make a final statement in the Executive Chamber.

After Black was pronounced dead, Henry stood on a podium in front of the TV camera and condemned the state for enforcing “a gentle, kind, kind, fragile, intellectually disabled person who violated my country’s laws because they might be.” “What happened here is the result of pure, unlimited blood and cowardice. It is a cruel and unlimited abuse of government power. It is the result of the failure of the criminal legal system.”

She told the crowd Black said he was shy about talking but had asked her to read a message.

“He wants his friends and family to know: ‘I love you, I will never forget you. All our relationships are very special. I’m so happy to see everyone and how we connect with each other,” she burst into tears. “What I know about his legal team is to look at this and keep doing what you are doing. God has given you a gift. You have the power, I can feel it.”