The Tennessee Department of Correction is scheduled to execute Byron Black on Aug. 5. He was convicted in 1989 of murdering his girlfriend, Angela Clay, and her two young daughters, Latoya and Lakeisha.
With the execution just over a week away, Black’s attorneys and the state are battling in court over how his intellectual disability and medical heart implant could factor into carrying out the sentence.
Several medical experts have confirmed Black has an intellectual disability, but the courts have time and again disagreed, upholding his sentence.
Tennessee has banned the execution of mentally disabled people, and the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that these executions amount to cruel and unusual punishment — a violation of the Eighth Amendment.
Repeated IQ tests have revealed scores below 70. Recent filings depict challenges early in life: Black was held back in second grade and couldn’t follow the rules to simple games like Red Light, Green Light. It also said at Black’s most recent assessment, he wasn’t able to make change for a $5 bill.
Several expert witnesses have confirmed his intellectual disability. He has also been diagnosed with dementia, schizophrenia and brain damage.
Black’s defense attorneys raised concerns about competency before he was even convicted, according to reporting by the Nashville Banner. Supreme Court decisions and state laws banning the execution of people with intellectual disabilities went into effect after his sentencing. His attorneys have appealed his competency ruling several times over the last few decades — the most recent attempt taking place this year. None of these attempts have been successful.
Critics make several arguments against these rulings. One of the most common: Black was deemed competent under old standards. The Tennessee legislature updated the parameters for mental incompetency in 2021. That law allows death row inmates to have their competency re-evaluated, but only once. And since Black underwent a re-evaluation in 2004, he doesn’t qualify.
Zoe Jamail, the policy coordinator for Disability Rights Tennessee, is among the advocates petitioning Gov. Bill Lee to reduce Black’s sentence. She said Black shouldn’t be put to death because of a legal loophole.
“If the court will not allow Mr. Black to have a fair hearing based on the medically accurate standards of today, then the governor must intervene and commute his sentence to life to ensure that Tennessee does not execute a man with intellectual disability — in contravention of the law, the values of Tennessee and our common decency,” Jamail said.
A court has ordered the TDOC to remove Black’s heart implant before his execution, but it’s unclear whether that will happen.
A Davidson County Chancery Court ordered the state to disable Black’s implant — which operates as both a pacemaker and defibrillator — before executing him. TDOC argued that’s impossible and appealed the ruling. The Tennessee Supreme Court announced Thursday it will take up that appeal.
His attorneys want the device disabled because it’s possible it would dole out powerful electric shocks to revive Black’s heart as he died, which could cause severe pain and suffering.
They made some specific requests for disabling it.
They asked that the deactivation happen as close to the execution as possible. That’s because Tennessee death row inmates have on several occasions learned their executions had been called off within an hour of the scheduled start time. Black is involved in several lawsuits challenging the lethal injection protocol and his death sentence, so it’s possible he would be given one of these delays.
They also asked the judge to require TDOC to bring in a trained medical expert and high-tech equipment to deprogram the device. It can be deactivated with a large magnet. But the medical witness who testified on behalf of Black’s legal team said this was dangerous. The device can — and often does — have the magnet function disabled. The implant is finicky about the magnet placement, and without an order, the person placing that magnet would have no medical training. The gurney straps cross over the area where the implant sits, which could interfere.
TDOC says it can’t bring in the medical expert or equipment. An agency official testified in writing that she had contacted a medical team at Nashville General Hospital, which had placed the implant. The hospital declined to travel to the prison, and it said the team could only carry out the task the day before.
During a hearing, both the judge and Black’s attorneys chastised the agency for contacting only one health provider — noting that Nashville is a health care hub.
“I didn’t understand that,” Chancellor Russell T. Perkins said from the stand. “I still don’t. It’s like a passive-aggressive pushback against the court’s order.”
He said he is usually fine with his decisions being appealed and reconsidered. But he was disappointed this time because he had lost sleep making his choice to order the deactivation, and once TDOC appealed, his decision was essentially irrelevant.
What’s next?
There are several unknowns.
Lee could commute Black’s sentence, per the disability advocates’ request.
The Tennessee Supreme Court could decide it needs more time to consider the heart implant issue and delay the execution. It could uphold the chancery court’s decision, meaning TDOC would have to find a way to disable the device the technical way. Or it could dissolve the order, meaning TDOC could leave the implant as it is or otherwise carry out the execution how it wants.
This story was produced by the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom, a collaboration between West Virginia Public Broadcasting, WPLN and WUOT in Tennessee, LPM, WEKU, WKMS and WKU in Kentucky and NPR.
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