A judge sided with Byron Black, the man scheduled for Tennessee’s next execution, and ordered the state to disable his heart implant before he undergoes a lethal injection.
Chancellor Russell T. Perkins issued the order on Friday afternoon. He’s the judge overseeing several challenges to the state’s lethal injection protocol in Davidson County Chancery Court, including Black’s request for this court order.
Black has a sophisticated device implanted in his chest. It doles out powerful shocks if the heart goes out of rhythm. His attorneys and medical witnesses say that is extremely likely to happen as he dies, so the implant would jolt him continuously, causing immense pain.
Perkins wrote that Black’s attorneys effectively argued that administering the injection without disabling his implant would violate his constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment. Perkins said he wasn’t persuaded by the state’s argument that it has no duty to remove the implant, and that it didn’t offer any other convincing arguments.
“State did not offer a declaration or live testimony asserting that any process or planning related to deactivating Mr. Black’s device at the execution will present an undue administrative or logistical burden,” he wrote.
He noted that he was more convinced to issue the order because it’s unlikely that the process would delay Black’s execution.
During hearings on Black’s request this week, medical experts discussed two ways for devices like his to be deactivated. One involves a high-tech controller, which can re-program his device. That would be guaranteed to work. The other, riskier option, would be to place a large magnet over the electronic implant. One of the medical experts who spoke on behalf of Black’s legal team explained several reasons this might not work.
Chancellor Perkins wrote that the Department of Correction must deprogram the device.
“Defendants are directed to arrange to have the necessary medical or certified technical professional present, along with any necessary equipment, at the execution,” the order reads in part.
The personnel portion is important; the state’s lethal injection protocol doesn’t involve trained medical experts — other than a physician who declares the time of death.
Black is on death row because he was convicted of a triple homicide that took place in 1988. He was found guilty of murdering his girlfriend, Angela Clay, and her two daughters from a previous marriage.
“This ruling does not in any way depreciate the seriousness of Mr. Black’s heinous crime, for which he was sentenced to death, nor does it indicate any insensitivity to how a ruling like this could feel to the family of the victims or to the members of the public,” the ruling reads.
Several physicians and attorneys have testified Black has an intellectual disability, and his legal team has cited that disability in an attempt to reduce Black’s sentence. But all of those attempts — including a request to the Tennessee Supreme Court last month — have failed.
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