Update: About 15 minutes before Oscar Smith was scheduled to be executed, Gov. Bill Lee released this statement: “Due to an oversight in preparation for lethal injection, the scheduled execution of Oscar Smith will not move forward tonight. I am granting a temporary reprieve while we address Tennessee Department of Correction protocol. Further details will be released when they are available.”
Executions in the state of Tennessee ground to a halt as the pandemic set in back in March 2020. But, the state plans to resume today by executing Oscar Smith, using lethal injection. His execution was first scheduled for June 2020, and rescheduled twice since the start of the pandemic.
Since 1916, 139 people have been killed by execution in the state of Tennessee. There was a nine-year break before the state resumed capital punishment in 2018.
We’ll learn about our state’s history of executions, what this week looked like leading up to one and where Tennessee stacks up on a national level.
But first, @ Us: We talked with a rabbi who wrote in to share about the Jewish tradition of natural burial in response to last week’s episode that talked about Larkspur Conversation.
Guests:
- Steven Hale, author, criminal defense investigator with AK Investigations in Nashville, former journalist for the Nashville Scene
- Brad MacLean, attorney, board president for Tennessee Innocence Project
- Liliana Segura, journalist for The Intercept
- Stacy Rector, director of Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty
On Air - 90.3 WPLN-FM