Tennessee is scheduled to resume executions this month, and some victims’ rights advocates are arguing there are better ways to spend state money than administering capital punishment.
Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty is the latest group to ask Gov. Bill Lee for a reprieve. Several attorneys for death row inmates have done the same. And he would need to make a decision soon. Oscar Franklin Smith is scheduled to be put to death on May 22, which would make him the first to die under Tennessee’s new lethal injection protocol, and the first to be executed by the state since 2020.
Family members of murder victims spoke on behalf of TADP on Thursday before delivering a formal letter requesting the reprieve. They said there were ways they could have been helped in the aftermath of the deaths of their loved ones, and that the state government should invest its resources in support instead of retribution…