NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Four people are now set for execution in 2025 after years of Tennessee pausing its execution process for death penalty cases.
These are the first four dates the court has set since the pause during the pandemic and following the independent investigation that found the Tennessee Department of Corrections wasn't following its rulebook on carrying out executions, using chemicals that weren't properly tested for contaminants that can cause surprise side effects if injected.
The process has now moved back in motion.
Those who have been scheduled in 2025 so far have been on death row for decades.
Here is what we know about each of them and what held up this process for the last five years.
Who is scheduled for execution
Oscar Franklin Smith
In 2022, Oscar Franklin Smith was scheduled to receive a lethal injection for the 1989 killings of his estranged wife, Judith Robirds Smith, and her teenage sons — Jason Burnett and Chad Burnett. But an oversight in preparation for the lethal injection caused a delay. The execution method is the state’s preferred means.
Smith was convicted of killing the three in their Woodbine home in 1989. Throughout the years, Judith Smith had filed domestic violence charges against Smith. A relative, 8-years-old, found the family dead.
Smith has been on death row since the 90s. His legal team made numerous attempts to stop the execution, however, a federal judge denied his most recent motion. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee rejected a clemency filing by Smith's attorneys.
His defense team argued that new DNA evidence proves he's innocent, saying the state is "poised to execute an innocent man." They're referring to a new analysis of a palm print on the murder weapon they say no longer points to it belonging to Smith, even though investigators also found gunshot and stab wounds on the victims.
Judge Aleta Trauger said there's no indication the new evidence would have changed Smith's guilty verdict or death sentence, which initially allowed the execution to go forward.
Harold Wayne Nichols
Harold Wayne Nichols is scheduled for execution Dec. 11. The state will notify Nichols of the method of execution on Nov. 26. He is allowed to pick his execution type because his crime took place before 1999.
A jury convicted Nichols of the 1989 rape and murder of Karen Pulley, 21. She was a college student.
Per court records, Nichols hit Pulley in the head four times with a board, fracturing her school and giving her brain injuries.
Authorities said he later claimed responsibility for other rapes in the Chattanooga area.
Donald Ray Middlebrooks
A jury convicted Donald Middlebrooks of the torture-murder of Kerrick Majors in 1987, according to court records.
Major was only 14, and he died due to his stab wounds. Court records show he died after accidentally breaking a $2 vase at a flea market in East Nashville on Gallatin Road, and Middlebrooks and others kidnapped him, tortured him and yelled racial slurs. The other two didn't receive the death penalty for the crime.
When his family filed a missing persons report for Majors, the police instead listed him as a runaway.
He was found in a creek bed, naked — with an X carved across his chest.
"I feel very good. Donald Middlebrooks got what he deserved," said John Majors, in a 1989 interview with the Tennessean. "I think it was on the most fair things I've seen done in this town on behalf of a Black person."
A judge sentenced him to death, but the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed the death penalty sentence and remanded him for resentencing in 1992.
However, he was put back on death row in 1999.
Per the Tennessee Supreme Court order, Middlebrooks is reset for his execution Sept. 24.
Byron Lewis Black
In 2022, a judge dismissed a motion to declare a Tennessee inmate intellectually disabled, a move that would have prohibited his upcoming execution.
He is now set for execution on Aug. 5.
Black was convicted in the 1988 shooting deaths in Nashville of girlfriend Angela Clay, 29, and her two daughters, Latoya, 9, and Lakeisha, 6. Prosecutors said Black was in a "jealous rage" when he shot the three at their home. At the time, Black was on work release while serving time for shooting and wounding Clay’s estranged husband.
Per court files, Angela's family called after they couldn't get in touch with her. Police discovered the scene after looking through a window and seeing the 6-year-old's body in a pool of blood on the floor. She tried to get away from Black, according to court files. Police got in through a window screen. The mother and older daughter died in the master bedroom.
Black didn't testify.
A judge sentenced him to death in 1989.
Black’s attorneys later argued he should be spared. They cited a 2021 law that made Tennessee’s prohibition against executing people with intellectual disability retroactive.
The difficulty in recent years for executions
An independent report, including hundreds of pages of emails, texts and policy manuals, revealed a Department of Correction employee running into difficulty trying to find drugs to kill death row inmates, starting as early as 2017.
It also showed that TDOC failed to follow its own rules when executing death row inmates since 2018.
The documents reveal TDOC was looking for Pentobarbital — a single-drug option for lethal injections that other states use.
Emails between TDOC and the pharmacy it works with reveal the agency was looking at importing the drug from a different country.
Years earlier, TDOC had even asked the pharmacy if they could get the drug through a veterinarian, but it didn't work out.
Jason Lamb contributed to this report.
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