Tennessee AG Asks For 8 Execution Dates Before June

NASHVILLE, TN -- Citing "the ongoing difficulty in obtaining the necessary lethal injection chemicals," Tennessee Attorney General asked the state supreme court Thursday to set execution dates for eight people prior before June 1.

Tennessee has not had an execution since 2009.

Three executions have already been set for this year. Billy Ray Irick, convicted of raping and murdering a 7-year-old girl in 1986, is scheduled to die Aug. 9. Two other scheduled executions will likely be delayed by appeals.

The AG wrote the eight executions he asked for Thursday are for men who "have long since concluded the standard three-tier appeals process and each case has been thoroughly litigated in the state courts and on federal review through the United States Supreme Court."

Irick and four others are challenging the state's lethal injection procedure under the Eighth Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. In January, the Nashville Scene reported there are concerns within the Department of Correction about Tennessee's lethal injection cocktail.

"Here is my concern with Midazolam," one person, outside state government but involved in the state's acquisition of the drugs, wrote; the person's identity is secret under state law.

"Being a benzodiazepine, it does not elicit strong analgesic effects. The subjects may be able to feel pain from the administration of the second and third drugs. Potassium chloride, especially."

Tennessee law permits the use of the state's 102-year-old electric chair - Old Smokey or Old Sparky, depending who one asks, which itself was built from reclaimed wood from the state's gallows - if lethal injection drugs are unavailable. Irick, because he was convicted prior to 1999, also has the option of selecting electrocution, though it's unlikely he'd do so, given his challenge of the lethal injection protocol. Tennessee has only used the electric chair once since 1960. Darryl Holton, convicted in 1997 for killing his four children, chose the electric chair for his 2007 execution.

Image via Shutterstock