Byron Black: Tennessee inmate executed despite heart implant concerns
It was not immediately clear what might have caused the pain. Black's attorneys have said they will review the data kept by the device as part of the autopsy.Black was convicted in 1988 for shooting his 29-year-old girlfriend Angela Clay and her two daughters, Latoya Clay, 9, and Lakeisha Clay, 6. He maintained his innocence, but his appeals were denied.Ms Clay's sister Linette Bell thanked God for this day, saying in a statement that Black "brought this upon himself" and the execution was "a closure for my family, my sister, and her two daughters". "His family is going through the same thing now we went through 37 years ago," she said. "I can't say I'm sorry because we never got an apology. He never apologized and he never admitted it, even on his dying bed, he took it to his grave with him. And he knows he did it." she said in the statement.Black became the 28th inmate to be executed in the US this year, with at least eight more executions scheduled. Capital punishment is legal in 27 states, as well as on the federal level. He was in a wheelchair and was suffering from several ailments including dementia, brain damage, kidney failure, and congestive heart failure, CBS News, the BBC's US partner, reported citing his lawyers.Black also had a cardioverter-defibrillator surgically implanted into his chest, which served as a pacemaker and emergency defibrillator."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," Black's lawyer Kelley Henry said.In mid-July, a trial court judge agreed with Black's lawyers that officials would have to deactivate his defibrillator to avert any unnecessary pain or prolong the execution. But Tennessee's supreme court intervened to say the trial court judge lacked the authority to make the ruling. The state disputed the claim that the injection would cause his defibrillator to shock him, and argued that he would not feel them either way. The US Supreme Court refused to intervene in the case.
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