Attorneys for Byron Black, a 66-year-old man on Tennessee’s death row, have filed a motion for a stay of his execution due to the potential for his implanted defibrillator to trigger a prolonged and gruesome death.
Byron Lewis Black, a death-sentenced man in Tennessee, has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay his execution and review his case on the grounds that he is constitutionally ineligible for execution due to intellectual disability, which the State of Tennessee has conceded, but Tennessee courts have denied relief due to procedural bars.
Byron Black, a 69-year-old man on Tennessee’s death row, has formally petitioned Governor Bill Lee to commute his death sentence to life without the possibility of parole due to his intellectual disability and severe health conditions.
Byron Black, a 68-year-old man on Tennessee’s death row, has filed a petition with the Tennessee Supreme Court to halt his execution due to extensive medical evidence of intellectual disability, brain damage, dementia, and multiple life-threatening physical illnesses.
Tennessee officials placed death row prisoner Oscar Smith in nearly total isolation during the final two weeks of his life, a move critics describe as psychologically torturous and legally questionable, and Smith was executed under a cloud of secrecy and procedural changes.
Attorneys for Tennessee death row men Oscar Smith and Byron Black are calling on Governor Bill Lee to issue a temporary halt on executions until March 2026, when a trial on the constitutionality of the state’s new lethal injection protocol is set to begin, due to concerns about the new protocol’s lack of safeguards.