On Thursday, May 22, the State of Tennessee executed Oscar Smith, a man who had been on Tennessee’s death row for 35 years. This was Tennessee’s first execution in five years.

Governor Lee chose not to stop this execution, though no court had reviewed Tennessee’s secretive new lethal injection protocol.

Prior to the execution, Federal Defender Kelley Henry stated, “There is no principled reason to allow the State to resume executions before the court has an opportunity to hear all of the evidence about whether TDOC (Tennessee Department of Correction) is sourcing its lethal chemicals legally, whether those chemicals are uncontaminated, unexpired, and undiluted, and whether the execution team is capable of carrying out its duties competently and constitutionally. Tennessee can do better than this.” 

Read the full article.

Thanks to all of you who sent letters, made calls, shared actions, and attended events to prevent this execution.

Though we worked tirelessly for a different outcome, our efforts did raise awareness of just how broken the death penalty system is while putting pressure on state leaders to finally acknowledge the failure of the death penalty to meet the real needs of victims and to make our state safer.

Fifty-one victims of violence and surviving family members of murder victims signed and delivered a letter to Governor Lee, asking him to use the exorbitant amount of state dollars currently expended to pursue executions to instead fund victim services and solve unsolved murders.

Watch their press conference here.

These victims and their families were met at the door to the governor’s office by a Tennessee State Trooper who told them that no one from Governor Lee’s staff was available to receive the letter, though the office had been alerted to the timing of the letter delivery the day before. This was incredibly disappointing for these brave individuals whose voices have already been sidelined by the current legal system and in whose name some politicians continue to justify the death penalty.

TADP will continue to organize those who are directly impacted by this failed policy, including victims of violence, surviving family members of murder victims, and death row exonerees. These impacted people will keep speaking out about why the death penalty system does not meet the needs of the vast majority of victims of violence and surviving families in our state and how it continues to risk the execution of the innocent.

The governor can expect more letters to be delivered to his office.

Currently in Tennessee, Byron Black has an execution date of August 5, and Harold Nichols has a date of December 11.

TADP will keep you updated on actions you can take to make your voice heard to prevent these executions and to center policies that support those who are most harmed by violence instead of policies that do more harm.

Tennessee victims of violence and surviving families of murder victims gathered for a press conference on May 8th to urge Governor Lee to continue the pause on executions and instead invest state resources into real solutions that support healing for crime survivors as well as violence prevention. Following the press conference, the group delivered a letter to the governor’s office signed by 51Tennesseans who are victims of violence or surviving families of murder victims.

Quotes from the Press Conference:

As a mother of a murdered son, I am pleading with Governor Lee not to create any more grieving families and to maintain the current pause on executions. What truly helps victims is access to trauma recovery services, financial and funeral assistance, counseling, safe housing, and violence prevention programs. The death penalty drains resources from programs that could provide real and immediate relief to all victims and their families. TADP Community Outreach Director Rafiah Muhammad-McCormick

Tennessee spends millions of tax dollars to pursue executions for a handful of people who have already been incarcerated for decades while hundreds of Tennessee families continue to wait for their loved ones’ cases to be solved and to access help for their recovery. Chapter Leader of the Greater Memphis Parents of Murdered Children and surviving family member C.L. “Tim” Williams

Some in my family supported his execution, and others did not. The added trauma and pain that this division caused is still there today and has broken relationships within our family. At a time when we needed one another the most, the death penalty tore us apart. I urge Governor Lee to reinvest resources currently used on the death penalty, to support grieving families like mine, to bring them together and help them heal. As someone who has lived through this experience, I can tell you that the death penalty did not foster healing for my family, only division. Reverend Timothy Holton whose young cousins Stephen, Brent, Eric, and Kayla Holton, who were murdered by their father, Daryl in 1997. Daryl was later executed by the State of Tennessee.

Kennetha Patterson, whose brother’s life was taken by murder, read the letter in its entirety before the group proceeded to walk to Governor Lee’s office.

Watch this powerful press conference on Facebook Live and share widely to amplify the voices of these impacted people who need to be heard.

I recently had a detached retina. Not something I would recommend. I had emergency surgery in February and then laser surgery in March. Despite weeks of having to sleep sitting up, along with no yoga, I am almost 100%. Almost.

The detached retina and the ensuing surgery caused the vision in my left eye to deteriorate. My current glasses’ prescription doesn’t touch the blurring in that eye now. I have made an appointment to get a new prescription but can’t get in to see the doctor until the end of next month. In the meantime, the vision in my right eye is practically 20/20. Nothing but a blur in my left. Still as the days pass, I am becoming accustomed to seeing in this wobbly way.

As I sat in a dimly lit church today for the Good Friday service, I squinted to make out faces. The flames from the candles appeared in multiples, and I held my hymn book close to my face to see the words. As the ministers read John’s account of Jesus arrest and execution, I could almost recite it.

It’s that familiar to most Christians. The story of Jesus’ crucifixion, an act of unconditional love and sacrifice, is central to our faith story. And we can clearly see that truth in the story. To be honest, we have seen it this way for so long that it is the only way many of us can see this story.

But there are layers, as with most stories. It is also a story about an execution, specifically Jesus’ execution, along with at least two other people. And the parallels in the gospel account to the capital punishment system today are everywhere, including guilt or innocence being beside the point.

The Good Friday story, whether we like it or not, is a story of the State’s use of violence to control a population and punctuate its own power. It’s the story of politicians who are more concerned with the optics of an execution and its impact on their positions than on justice and truth. It’s the story about the need for the powers that be to make an example of someone, anyone, and most often society’s “no one.”

I wonder how many Christians read this story today in Tennessee and how many know that the state plans to resume executions? I wonder how many of our state leaders read this story today and made that connection themselves? With which character in the story do they identify? With whom do we identify? When a dying Jesus says, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do?”, what is he asking forgiveness for?

These are questions that I have, questions about our vision for those of us who identify as Christians. Have we developed tunnel vision in our understanding of Good Friday? Is this just a beloved story about personal salvation or does the story have implications for who we are and how we live together every day? What does Good Friday ask of us and how might it be calling us in this moment and in this time to check our vision, to see other human beings in all their brokenness as God sees them?

—TADP Executive Director Reverend Stacy Rector

P.S. Please consider reaching out to Governor Lee, if you haven’t already, and ask him not to resume executions. There are too many unanswered questions and too much tunnel vision. Take action today.

After five years with no executions in our state, the Tennessee Supreme Court has set execution dates for four men on Tennessee’s death row.

The dates set by the court are:

Oscar Smith, May 22

Byron Black, August 5

Donald Middlebrooks, September 24

Harold Nichols, December 11

Now is the time to ask Governor Lee to stop these executions.

The new lethal injection protocol recently announced by the Tennessee Department of Correction is more secretive than the previous protocol, despite the governor’s insistence that the process be transparent. The new protocol also relies on pentobarbital, a drug that has been shown to cause unconstitutional suffering in those who are executed.

TAKE ACTION NOW and let Governor Lee know that resuming executions does not make us safer. The resources Tennessee spends on executions should instead go to support those harmed by violence and on violence prevention initiatives.

BACKGROUND: In 2022, prior to the release of the findings of an independent review of Tennessee’s problematic lethal injection protocol, Governor Bill Lee stated, “To ensure continued transparency for Tennesseans, we will publicly share the report and any additional action when our internal assessment is complete.” In a press statement about the release of the report, the governor went on to say, “I have thoroughly reviewed the findings in the independent investigator’s report and am directing several actions to ensure the Tennessee Department of Correction adheres to the proper protocol.”

On January 9, 2025, after initially refusing to release the new execution protocol to the media, the Tennessee Department of Correction released a redacted version. The new protocol is noticeably shorter than the previous one and includes only a single page on the lethal injection chemicals with no specific directions for testing of the drugs. The new protocol also removes a requirement that the drug, pentobarbital, come from a licensed pharmacist and authorizes the state to deviate from the protocol whenever the commissioner deems it necessary. The protocol is supposed to act as Tennessee’s own official set of rules governing its execution process, so by its very nature it cannot be open to deviation on a whim.  

Then on January 16, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it was withdrawing the federal government’s lethal injection protocol based on concerns that execution by pentobarbital may cause unconstitutional pain and suffering. The DOJ’s review of the use of this drug for lethal injection confirms what medical experts have said for years: pentobarbital causes excruciating pain when used to carry out executions and violates the Eighth Amendment. The use of pentobarbital in executions also creates a serious risk of trauma to the correctional staff who are charged with carrying out executions. The greater the secrecy around this protocol, the greater the risk of harm to TDOC employees.

On December 23, 2024, President Joe Biden commuted 37 federal death sentences to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, representing the largest number of death sentences commuted by any President in the modern era.

YOUR ACTIONS mattered in achieving this result. Thank you!

Calls for President Biden to act had been growing as letters from hundreds of individuals and groups, including TADP and other state advocates, business leaders, Black pastors, Catholics, innocence organizations, prosecutors, former judges, mental health and intellectual disability advocates, victim family members, were made public, stressing concerns about the federal death penalty system that warranted commutations.

This decision means that no federal prisoner will be at imminent risk of execution under the incoming administration. During President-elect Trump’s first term, the federal government carried out 13 executions in a seven-month period, an unprecedented number and pace.

A majority of those executed during this execution spree were people of color, while several had claims of intellectual disability, severe mental illness, racial bias, prosecutorial misconduct, and other serious problems in their cases.

The cases of those whose sentences were commuted reflect many of these same problems, and much like the cases of those executed, the courts have been unable or unwilling to address those problems.

“This is a historic day,” said Martin Luther King, III, who publicly urged the President to commute the federal death row. “By commuting these sentences, President Biden has done what no President before him was willing to do: take meaningful and lasting action not just to acknowledge the death penalty’s racist roots but also to remedy its persistent unfairness.”

Today is another historic day as we celebrate Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and inaugurate a new president. But it is also a day that raises concerns for many of us. We are concerned about the future of our democracy, the growing divide between the haves and the have nots, the climate crisis, and the epidemic of gun violence, among many other things. We may feel disillusioned and powerless as we take stock of all that we face. The challenges seem too great.

Celebrating Dr. King today is a antidote to that disillusionment and powerlessness. This day we celebrate knowing that our nation has faced hard times before. Dr. King’s own life and death remind us of the risk we take when we follow his example to stand for justice as well as what we can achieve.

Because we did not give up or give in, President Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 men. They will live because our collective action mattered. It happened because we made it happen. And, we will keep acting and speaking and marching and voting and praying and singing and whatever we must to ensure that Dr. King’s legacy endures–with justice rolling down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream–no matter how long it takes or how hard the journey is.

Friends, never underestimate what we can do together.

Photo: Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 – 1968) holds a press conference at the Savoy Hotel in London, UK, September 1964. (Photo by Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

There is a very real opportunity to convince President Biden to commute the sentences of everyone on the federal death row before he leaves office, but we need to act fast.

Can you please add your name to our joint petition urging President Biden to act?

During the last seven months of the previous Trump administration, President Trump executed 13 men and women who were on the federal death row. Many of those executed had intellectual disabilities, serious mental illnesses, and histories of deep trauma, and their legal proceedings were tainted by racial bias, junk science, and other flaws. These deaths also occurred despite calls for mercy from victims’ families and demands for fairness from a broad coalition of Americans across political and faith backgrounds.

Will you please help us urge President Biden to save the lives of the 40 individuals currently on the federal death row by converting their sentences to prison terms?

Add Your Name Here!

The federal death penalty is a deeply flawed system, particularly for Black, Brown, and economically disadvantaged people, who are the most vulnerable to wrongful convictions and death sentences. It does not deter crime or enhance public safety. Continuing the federal death penalty increases the risk of killing innocent people and deepening systemic inequalities.

We believe that if we stand together, we can convince President Biden to use his authority to protect and save the lives of the individuals on death row. Will you join us?

Thank you!

P.S. You can learn more and add your name here.

On September 24, 2024, 55-year-old Marcellus “Kaliifah” Williams was executed by the State of Missouri for the 1998 murder of Felicia Gayle. He maintained his innocence from the beginning and for 23 years until his execution.

Though there was strong evidence of innocence in his case, including a crime scene covered with forensic evidence that contained no link to Mr. Williams; unreliable testimony provided by incentivized witnesses; racial bias in his jury selection, opposition to his execution from the victim’s family and the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney; and Mr. Williams’ willingness to accept an Alford plea for a sentence of life without parole so he could continue to fight for his freedom, he was executed because Missouri’s governor, attorney general, and state and federal courts did nothing to stop it.

Since January, St. Louis prosecuting attorney Wesley Bell had sought to stop this execution, stating that new evidence suggested Williams was “actually innocent.”

In a statement following the execution, General Bell said, “Marcellus Williams should be alive today. There were multiple points in the timeline that decisions could have been made that would have spared him the death penalty. If there is even the shadow of a doubt of innocence the death penalty should never be an option. This outcome did not serve the interests of justice.”

The NAACP said Mr. Williams’ death harkened back to the days of racist terrorism.

“Tonight, Missouri lynched another innocent Black man,” the group stated in a post on X.  “Governor Parson had the responsibility to save this innocent life, and he didn’t. The NAACP was founded in 1909 in response to the barbaric lynching of Black people in America — we were founded exactly because of people like Governor Parson who perpetuate violence against innocent Black people. We will hold Governor Parson accountable. When DNA evidence proves innocence, capital punishment is not justice — it is murder.”

On October 17, Texas plans to execute Robert Roberson, a man with autism who has spent over 20 years on Texas’s death row for a crime that never happened. New evidence shows that Mr. Roberson’s daughter, Nikki, died of natural and accidental causes and that no crime occurred.

There is still time to stop this execution so that another man isn’t executed for something he didn’t do.

Sign the petition to urge Governor Abbott to stop Mr. Robertson’s execution. You can call the governor’s office at 361-264-9653.

Watch and share this video as Rev. Brian Wharton meets with Mr. Roberson for the first time since 2003, when Mr. Roberson was wrongfully convicted. Rev. Wharton played a crucial role in the prosecution of Mr. Roberson and now carries a burden for guilt for the part that he played in this miscarriage of justice.

The execution of one innocent person is one too many for the death penalty system to continue to exist.

We simply can’t trust this failed system to determine who lives and who dies. Enough.

Even in this time of divisive rhetoric and politics, we can agree that all of us want to feel and to be safe.

But what is safety? If you ask people what safety means to them, you will get a wide range of answers.

Safety is not just the absence of violence, as our colleagues at Equal Justice USA (EJUSA) remind us. Instead, a community is safe when it is thriving and the well-being of its people is on the rise. That means ensuring that people have good jobs, quality housing, access to every facet of health care, excellent education, and more.

When people don’t have what they need to thrive, then crime and violence will follow. A recent report by Prison Policy Initiative shows that Tennessee has the 9th highest per capita incarceration rate in the world, with little impact on violence. The only nation that incarcerates more per capita is El Salvador. According to the report, Tennessee incarcerates 817 individuals in state prisons, local jails, federal prisons, and other systems of confinement per 100,000 people.

Still, some of Tennessee’s lawmakers tell us that we are not locking up enough people. They jump on the fear and outrage we experience in the wake of violent incidents to double down on expanding a decadeslong, failed mass incarceration experiment instead of listening to the needs of those most impacted by violence and following the data to find the most effective way forward.

Since District Attorney General Steve Mulroy was elected in Shelby County a few years ago, some Tennessee lawmakers have been laser-focused on finding a way to subvert the will of Memphis voters and to oust him from serving as DA, simply because they don’t like his politics. There has been a concerted effort to provide misinformation to the public, laying the blame for violent crime in Memphis at the feet of General Mulroy and using this narrative to strengthen the power of the Tennessee Attorney General while taking power from elected prosecutors.

MLK50, a nonprofit Memphis newsroom focused on poverty, power and public policy, recently published this story by Katherine Burgess, “State Sen. Taylor is seeking to oust DA Mulroy. The move is rooted in misinformation.”

According to the article:

“In a news conference held June 17, Taylor would not give specific examples of instances when Mulroy has refused to prosecute broad swaths of crimes, instead referring reporters to his X (formerly known as Twitter) and Facebook pages…MLK50 could not find an example cited by Taylor in which Mulroy has, of his own volition, decided not to prosecute entire types of crimes. Here, we go through some of Taylor’s most frequent criticisms of Mulroy and why they are misinformation.”

Particularly if you live in Memphis, I hope you will read this article to better understand the degree to which misinformation and lack of context are distorting the realities on the ground and distracting from the real work that all of us, regardless of politics, need to do to truly tackle the issue of violence in our state. Until we can have honest conversations based on facts and center the voices of those who are most impacted, our communities will not experience the safety that we all deserve.

Read the MLK50 article here.

Photo by Laramie Renae

(Reverend Timothy Holton is a surviving family member of four murder victims and is the cousin of Daryl Holton, a man executed in Tennessee. These are excerpts from a recent presentation prepared by Reverend Holton.)

Throughout the process of collecting my thoughts to share, I have been pursued by the words of one of my favorite hymns: Here I am, Lord, is it I, Lord? I have heard you calling in the night, and I will go Lord, if you lead me…well, here’s the deal: when you say those words and take that “YES” step toward God, it turns out what you agree to might not look like what you expected.

For me, this all began on November 30, 1997. I was a 17-year-old senior at Moore County High School in Lynchburg, cramming for midterms and living my best teenage life. That rainy Sunday afternoon, in the neighboring town of Shelbyville (where I now live), my cousin Daryl Holton used a military style rifle and took the lives of his four children: Stephen was 12, Brent was 10, Eric was 6, and Kayla was 4.  A few days later, I served as pallbearer and carried each of their small, white caskets to their final resting place in the little cemetery in rural Bedford County.  A little more than a year and a half later, Daryl’s trial concluded with four murder convictions, and a death sentence.  Almost 10 years later, at 1:00 am on September 12, 2007, Daryl was seated in Tennessee’s electric chair.  Twenty-five minutes later, he was pronounced dead. My life’s path changed dramatically, fracturing me in two parts: mourning the murder of my cousins, and grieving their murderer; all family whom I loved. I yearned deeply for an internal reconciliation that I believed, and finally decided, would never come.

(Reverend Stacy Harwell-Dye of West End United Methodist Church in Nashville invited Reverend Holton to attend the TADP vigil on the evening of Billy Ray Irick’s execution in 2018. Reverend Holton then became actively involved with TADP and joined the Board of Directors. He also joined the Visitation on Death Row program to become a visitor on death row. In the following excerpt, he shares an experience that happened during his orientation to the program when he was taken on a tour of Unit 2.)

Overwhelmed, overstimulated, and trying to manage an unruly bouquet of emotions, I noticed someone moving toward the corner of the room where I stood…not just moving toward my corner of the room, but one of the inmates moving directly, toward, me.  What could he want?  When he was within arm’s length, he stuck out his hand, and with a warm smile and comforting voice he said “Hi, I’m Terry King, you must be Tim Holton, Daryl’s cousin. Daryl was my neighbor while he was here, most all of us knew him actually. Would you like to see his cell, where he lived?” I can’t recall if I even responded, but suddenly I was standing at cell C-206, where my cousin spent the last 10 years of his life; where he ate, slept, where he lived.

In that moment, it felt like time stood still, and I experienced a peace beyond anything I had ever experienced before wash over me.  All of the trauma, all of the guilt, all of the wounds I had carried for all of those years about Daryl, and Stephen, and Brent, and Eric, and Kayla, they all bubbled up from the depths of my mind and body, and as they rose they changed, and the healing I thought impossible, instantly became more than just possible, it became reality, and it happened in cell C-206, on death row. 

Now as a volunteer chaplain at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, every week I make my way down the walkways lined with razor wire and through the large heavy doors that still occasionally startle me when they slam shut, to be with my friends in Unit 2.  We talk, we pray, we laugh, we support and nurture one another, and we meet to wrestle with theology and grow in God. 

The Spirit’s reaching into one of the darkest and most painful experiences in my life and unbinding the grace within it; the Spirit’s reaching across our connection to straighten the twisted and tangled pathway to this ministry, the Spirit’s reaching through Terry King’s handshake transforming painful trauma into healed peace and softened empathy; the Spirit’s reaching through my spouse Jim who doesn’t always understand or share my fearless nature in this work but loves me unconditionally and continually picks me up and lends me his strength when this hard work becomes more than one person can bear; and the Spirit’s continual defiance of the isolating bounds of razor wire walkways and locked solid metal doors to meet a group of condemned men who are my friends, my family, my people, and to dwell with them in a community overflowing with boundless love, for that, for all of that, I say, thanks be to God.

According to Amnesty International’s Global Report 2023, these nations carried out the most executions last year.

China is estimated to execute thousands of people annually but classifies the number as a state secret. We can safely assume then that China is the world’s leading executioner.

Excluding China, of the known number of executions in 2023, Iran came in first with at least 853 executions, accounting for 74% of the global total. Saudi Arabia placed second with 172 executions accounting for 15%. Somalia followed with at least 38 executions. The United States came in fourth at 24 executions, and Iraq carried out at least 16. 

The number of executions carried out by these nations and a handful of others, 1153, is the highest number of executions since 2015, but the spike can mostly be attributed to 48% rise in executions in Iran.

If the fact that the U.S. keeps company with nations that our government regularly condemns for human right violations and oppressive policies makes you uncomfortable, then good. It should. The U.S. position on the death penalty impugns our nation’s credibility, particularly as our government chastises others nations for their human rights records while continuing a policy that no other western, industrialized nation employs.

Now for some good news: Only 16 countries carried out executions in 2023. This represents the lowest number of countries executing on record. Even if the U.S. is among this number, it is encouraging that more nations are moving away from the death penalty. In fact, the parliaments of Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, and Zimbabwe all considered abolition bills last year.

Our nation can and must do better. It’s time to keep better company.

Read more of Amnesty’s report.