‘Hurting so bad': Tennessee death row inmate cries out in pain during lethal injection

News.com.au

5 days ago

A Tennessee death row inmate cried out in pain after authorities refused to deactivate his implanted defibrillator as he was executed for murdering his girlfriend and her two young daughters.
Byron Black, 69, was pronounced dead at 10.43am on Tuesday local time, about 10 minutes after receiving a lethal injection at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, according to state correctional officials and as reported by The New York Post.
The convicted murderer was put to death despite a legal battle over concerns his heart device would repeatedly shock him once the lethal chemicals spread throughout his body.
'Oh, it's hurting so bad,' Black reportedly said as he lay with his hands and chest restrained.
Black – who was sentenced to death for the fatal 1988 shootings of Angela Clay, 29, and her two daughters Latoya, 9, and Lakeisha, 6 – had no final words before he was strapped to a gurney and given a single dose of barbiturate pentobarbital.
His spiritual adviser, who was singing and praying over Black during the execution, told him: 'I'm sorry. Just listen to my voice.'
Black's lawyer said a review of the defibrillator will be conducted as part of an autopsy.
'The fact that was he able to raise his head several times and express pain tells you that the pentobarbital was not acting the way that state's experts claim it acts,' Kelley Henry said, adding her client was wheelchair-bound and also suffering from dementia, brain damage, kidney failure, congestive heart failure and other conditions.
'Today, the state of Tennessee killed a gentle, kind, fragile, intellectually disabled man in a violation of the laws of our country simply because they could.'
Ms Henry had earlier unsuccessfully argued that Black shouldn't be put to death due to his apparent intellectual disability.
A trial judge ruled last month that officials must deactivate Black's cardioverter-defibrillator – a small, battery-powered electronic instrument implanted in his chest – to prevent unnecessary pain and avoid prolonging the execution.
Ms Henry said the device could be disabled with a handheld machine.
But Tennessee's Supreme Court overturned that decision last Thursday, ruling that the lower-court judge lacked the authority to issue that order. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee also announced this week he would not show Black any leniency.
Prosecutors said Black was in a jealous rage when he shot his three victims at their house.
He committed the murders when he was on work-release while serving time for shooting and wounding Ms Clay's estranged husband.
'His family is now going through the same thing we went through 37 years ago,' Ms Clay's sister, Linette Bell, said in a statement that was read after Black was pronounced dead.
'I can't say I'm sorry because we never got an apology.'
Black's execution was the second carried out in Tennessee since May, ending a five-year hiatus in the state's use of capital punishment.
He also becomes the 28th person executed in the US this year – the highest annual total since 2015.