NASHVILLE, Tenn. — On Jan. 16, a Tennessee Chancery Court judge ruled that members of the press have a legal right to witness executions from beginning to end, granting a temporary injunction that expands media access and reframes executions as a continuous judicial process rather than a series of isolated moments.
Judge I’Ashea Myles held that “the press has the right to observe the entire execution, from start to finish,” according to Austin Sarat writing in Justia Verdict. The ruling challenges long-standing limitations on what media witnesses are permitted to see during executions in Tennessee.
Writing in Justia Verdict, Sarat reports that Myles “offered a clear and persuasive answer to questions that long plagued the jurisprudence of capital punishment.” Ruling that an execution “is part of the judicial process, not a separate procedure governed by the needs of the correctional officers charged with carrying it out,” Myles found that “an execution is more than the moment someone is put to death, and that it includes all the preparatory steps that lead up to that moment.”
As observed by the Nashville Banner, Myles “granted a temporary injunction to a collective of plaintiffs… seeking greater access and transparency to executions in Tennessee.” She stated that “whether you are for or against the death penalty in Tennessee is not the issue,” but rather that “it is in the public interest to ensure that the death penalty in the State of Tennessee both brings closure to victims and is done in an appropriate fashion.”
Examining the decision, Sarat writes in Justia Verdict that Myles’ ruling “opens a new way of thinking about how the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment and the Fifth Amendment protection against being punished twice for the same crime might come into play in death cases.”
In the past, Sarat notes, “courts have generally applied these amendments to regulate the amount of pain an execution method, including lethal injection, can impose or to prevent the state from carrying out … ‘death by installments.’”
Sarat further emphasizes that “many of America’s painful, botched lethal injection executions go wrong long before the drugs begin to flow,” and that if these “failures are not regarded as part of the punishments they impose, the government has a free hand to inflict as much pain as it wants for as long as it wants.”
Expanding on this point, the Nashville Banner reported that the state’s current execution protocol “is plagued with the same issues that have marked botched executions for decades: secrecy, intentional omission, inattention to detail, and untrained and unlicensed prison personnel attempting to fill a medical role.”
Citing specific cases, the Nashville Banner explained that “the state’s current lethal injection protocol has seen recent legal challenges from Byron Black — who was executed on Aug. 5, 2025 — and Christa Pike, whose execution is scheduled for Sept. 30.” The outlet also reported that Tennessee’s new execution protocol “uses a single drug, pentobarbital, instead of the three-drug cocktail used … between 2018 and 2020.”
Sarat, writing in Justia Verdict, looked to the 2009 case of Romell Broom, who “became the first person whose lethal injection was stopped because the execution team could not insert the IV needed to carry the deadly drugs into a vein.”
After enduring “nearly two and a half hours of invasive and painful medical procedures, including being subjected to a painful procedure known as ‘fishing,’ where a needle ‘is moved around under the skin in an attempt to find a vein,’” Broom was “crying from the pain and emotional trauma,” Sarat writes.
Sarat reports that when the State of Ohio announced it would attempt to execute Broom again, he “sued, claiming, among other things, that a second execution attempt would violate the Double Jeopardy Clause.” Broom argued that his execution “began with the reading of the death warrant or with the first insertion of a needle.”
According to Sarat, the Ohio Supreme Court disagreed, defining an execution attempt as “commenc[ing] when the lethal drug enters the IV line.” Because the attempt never reached that point, the court found that jeopardy never attached, meaning the botched execution attempt “was not punishment and ‘did not by itself place the prisoner at risk of death.’”
At a Dec. 3, 2025, hearing seeking an injunction, the plaintiffs’ attorney argued that “there’s no opportunity for a neutral observer to see what is actually happening,” as reported by the Nashville Banner.
Sarat notes in Justia Verdict that Judge Myles’ decision arose from a lawsuit brought by multiple news organizations, which argued they were entitled to observe “full lethal injection and electrocution attempts in the State,” not just the moment of death. The plaintiffs also contended that “Tennessee’s current execution protocol ‘arbitrarily limits access to critical portions of the execution proceeding.’”
According to the Nashville Banner, Myles ordered “changes to the state’s lethal injection protocol,” including requiring that “all members of the execution team … put on PPE suits covering their identification badges and hair.” She also ordered that “official witnesses [be] moved to the witness room no later than 9:45 a.m., and the curtains to the execution chamber will be opened no later than 10 a.m. They will remain open until the pronouncement of death.”
Sarat writes that Myles “agreed that the press has the right to observe the entire execution, from start to finish,” citing a Tennessee statute guaranteeing that members of the media may be “present at the carrying out of” death sentences.
Myles wrote that “executions include more than the time when a condemned person dies,” adding that the “constriction of the right to be present in the fullest sense of the word by diminishing that right to a mere 10 to 15 minutes … is a limitation on the official witness’s right to be present at the execution event,” Sarat notes.
The Nashville Banner reported that Myles also referenced a quote from former Tennessee Sen. Bud Gilbert, who said, “It’s imperative that we have the media there to witness [executions] … to spread the news that it’s being done as a deterrent, but to also make sure that the State exercises that awesome power with the highest level of decorum and that it’s carried out appropriately.”
Sarat concludes that Myles’ ruling explains “why it is so important to get it right when we talk about what an execution is and when it begins,” writing that “executions are creatures unto themselves … [and] represent the final and most consequential stage of the criminal justice process.”
Follow the Vanguard on Social Media – X, Instagram and Facebook. Subscribe the Vanguard News letters. To make a tax-deductible donation, please visit davisvanguard.org/donate or give directly through ActBlue. Your support will ensure that the vital work of the Vanguard continues.
