Stockard on the Stump: Tennessee governor defends Correction commissioner in failed executions

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee continues to give his top correction official a get-out-of-jail free card for botched executions.

Correction Commissioner Frank Strada got the job in January 2023 despite overseeing three problematic executions as a deputy commissioner in Arizona, then helped put together the protocol used in two botched executions in Tennessee, including this week’s failed lethal injection of Christa Pike.

Asked Thursday if he bears some responsibility for hiring and keeping Strada amid the series of troubled executions, Lee avoided a straight answer.

“So far as we know, the Department of Correction followed exactly the protocol that was outlined and vetted and approved by the attorney general’s office. At this point, that is all we know, which is the very reason why we will have an investigation,” Lee told reporters following a ribbon cutting for a Goodwill campus in Nashville.

Lee declined early this week to grant a reprieve to Pike even though her attorneys argued that she suffered through sexual abuse and neglect as a child before being convicted of killing classmate Colleen Slemmer, a factor they said wasn’t considered adequately when she was sentenced in a 1996 trial.

To his credit, Lee ordered an immediate investigation of the botched execution Wednesday night after two rounds of injections failed to put Pike to death. The question is: How many independent investigations does it take to figure out the protocol is a failure?

Media witnesses at Riverbend Maximum Security Facility, said they could hear her breathing and “snoring” after two injections but couldn’t see what was happening before she was taken to a hospital for treatment. 

Federal public defenders filed an emergency motion to end the execution Thursday night and are seeking a commutation. 

It marks the second failed execution out of the last three performed in Tennessee. 

Lee called off the execution of Tony Von Carruthers and gave him a one-year reprieve in May after a physician tried — and failed — for more than an hour to insert backup and central intravenous lines required by protocol. 

Republican senators this summer called for a third-party review of the Carruthers case and independent investigation. But Lee refused.

Mismanaged

Democratic Sen. Raumesh Akbari said Thursday the state’s “mismanagement” of death row is “cruel and inhumane.”

“What happened Wednesday night was not an isolated failure. It is a pattern,” Akbari said. She cited the 2022 halting of the Oscar Smith execution after state officials admitted lethal injection drugs had not been properly tested as part of the state’s guidelines. 

Lee postponed all executions at that time until a full review was done. He did the same thing Wednesday night but didn’t know Thursday who would conduct the new investigation or how long it would take.

The Department of Correction said Thursday it followed “every step” of its lethal injection protocol, which has been consistently effective and doesn’t allow for “additional procedures. It didn’t answer questions about whether Strada was culpable.

But Akbari said, if the Department of Correction followed its protocol in the Pike case, then the protocol itself is the “problem.” She urged lawmakers to get involved, and they are likely to when the General Assembly convenes in January, even though some sort of “compassionate conservatism” coined by former President George W. Bush is likely to go nowhere.

“The governor’s third-party review is a start, but it is no substitute for oversight. It is time for the General Assembly to exercise its oversight function over the executive branch,” Akbari said as she called the death penalty a policy failure.

Good luck, though, with looking over the governor’s shoulder on this not-so-touchy-feely topic.

Tennessee’s frontrunner to be governor, Republican U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, previously said she wants to reinstate the electric chair and reiterated her stance Thursday, saying she supports an independent review but wants to bring back a modern form of “Old Sparky.”

Here’s a prediction: The state will jump through the bureaucratic hoops of a full review, which is likely to stretch well into 2027. Then Blackburn will kindly toss it into a trash can and push for resumption of the electric chair. 

In fact, death row inmates can request electrocution under a 2014 law if the state can’t obtain the proper drugs for lethal injection. Five inmates opted for electrocution in 2018 and 2019.

Lawmakers have talked about hangings and firing squads in the last few years. It wouldn’t be a stretch to see the electric chair return with a vengeance. After all, the death penalty is designed to get revenge, even if that’s not the kind of penalty Jesus envisioned as they nailed him to the cross.

Better late than never

Twelve years after the state identified problems with the cell-door locks at Tennessee’s Morgan County prison, Corrections Officer Dustin Pedigo was killed in February when inmate Reginald Steed jimmied his cell door and allegedly stabbed Pedigo to death.

Replacements aren’t coming at breakneck speed, either.

The Department of Correction knew the locks could be opened with a piece of paper in 2013 but prioritized all other prisons and put off replacing them because the Morgan County facility was the state’s newest, District Attorney Russell Johnson of East Tennessee told a Senate corrections subcommittee this week, reiterating what Strada previously told lawmakers.

The state won’t finish installing new locks until October 2029, Johnson said, referring to an August report from Strada.

The sense of urgency, or lack thereof, within the department is saddening.

Tennessee senators’ unannounced prison visit irritates correction commissioner

Steed, who had said in letters, phone calls and an interview with a U.S. marshal that he would kill a prison officer, according to Johnson, was found dead in his cell Sept. 22 at the Riverbend Maximum Security Facility in Nashville where he’d been transferred.

Davidson County District Attorney Glenn Funk asked the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to investigate the death, which is being done in a “parallel process” with the Department of Correction, according to Johnson.

The TBI is also looking into the stabbing incident at Morgan County, and a Morgan County grand jury is gathering information on the incident, according to Johnson.

Strada didn’t attend this week’s corrections subcommittee hearing, but a Department of Correction official acknowledged that the door-lock project is nearing a start.

Subcommittee Chairman Tom Hatcher acknowledged that replacing cell-door locks is a major undertaking but was hardly satisfied with the project’s time line.

“If I’d had one of my employees murdered at the facility and it was because of the locks, that would have been my priority,” Hatcher told the Lookout. 

Blackburn challenges phone subpoena

The New Civil Liberties Alliance filed a complaint Wednesday on behalf of U.S. Sen. Blackburn, the Republican gubernatorial candidate in Tennessee, saying former special counsel Jack Smith violated her rights by subpoenaing her phone records in connection with his investigation into whether President Donald Trump tried to derail the 2020 presidential election.

The filing in the U.S. District Court in Nashville contends then-Attorney General Merrick Garland illegally named Smith as special counsel in November 2022 and gave him sweeping powers, without a nomination by President Joe Biden or congressional approval. 

The nonprofit group says Smith, the Department of Justice, FBI, special counsel’s office and Public Integrity Section obtained a non-disclosure order requiring Verizon to conceal the subpoena from Blackburn and 20 other Republican lawmakers, a move that stripped her of the constitutional right to challenge it. The subpoena enabled the special counsel to find out who Blackburn talked to on the cell phone, when and for how long.

Stockard on the Stump: Jan. 6 probe creeps into Tennessee gubernatorial race

The lawsuit asks the court to declare Smith’s appointment unconstitutional; the seizure of her toll records unlawful and a violation of the Free Speech or Debate Clause, the First Amendment right of association and the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. The filing also seeks an order for the return of records and the award of $1 in damages. They must be working cheap.

“Through his Arctic Frost witch hunt that targeted conservatives across America and even the president of the United States, Jack Smith perpetrated one of the worst abuses of government power in our nation’s history. This lawsuit is solely about holding Mr. Smith accountable and ensuring that our nation’s justice system can never again be weaponized against the American people,” Blackburn said in a statement.

The filing points out the investigation was called Arctic Frost in reference to an orange, mocking President Trump’s complexion.  

Smith testified before a Senate committee this week about his investigation and said he would seek to indict Trump on criminal charges for trying to obstruct the election and for keeping boxes of classified documents at his Florida compound.

The Blackburn filing, of course, fails to mention that Trump stood in a bunker and watched video of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol that led to the death of multiple police officers, nor does it refer to those who participated in the riot as insurrectionists. It also skips the fact that Blackburn voted to certify the election of Biden, even as Trump claimed, and still does, that the election was stolen.

That could be one reason Trump declined to endorse Blackburn in this year’s Republican primary against U.S. Rep. John Rose.

The silver lining

Notably, Trump did attend the University of Tennessee football game in Knoxville last week in the Vols’ loss to No. 1-ranked Texas, causing security headaches and requiring students to enter the stadium early rather than tailgate until the last minute. 

The university felt so bad about the situation that it sold beer at half-price during the game, which isn’t a terrible trade-off, all things considered

Green pulls a Black(burn)

Blackburn has been taking shots from critics for months for refusing to debate opponents in the gubernatorial race. After declining to go head-to-head with Rose and state Rep. Monty Fritts in the primary, she doesn’t appear likely to join a debate sponsored by the Tennessee Press Association for the general election either. 

Democratic candidate Jerri Green seemed to be taking the high road in this philosophical standoff. But now she’s using technicalities to avoid debating independents David Hatley and Lauren Pinkston, saying they haven’t raised enough money or gotten enough polling points to justify her joining a debate.

So much for standing up in a public forum to argue for your political life. This leaves us wondering: Is Green pulling a Marsha?

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