On behalf of the Tennessee Department of Correction, Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery III requested on Thursday that the Tennessee Supreme Court set execution dates in eight capital cases.
The State, through the Department of Correction, is required by law to carry out death sentences by lethal injection; however, its ability to do so after June 1, is uncertain due to the ongoing difficulty in obtaining the necessary lethal injection chemicals.
In each of these cases, decades have passed since juries in multiple districts across the State sentenced the defendants to death. All of the defendants 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.
The Tennessee Constitution guarantees victims of crime the right to a “prompt and final conclusion of the case after the conviction of sentence.”