In early August<\/span>, on the one-year anniversary of his father\u2019s death, Samson Childs invited his godfather out to eat at a Wingstop on Nashville\u2019s south side, not far from where his dad grew up. Hanging out with his godfather was a way for Childs to feel close to his father, Byron Black, who died at 69. \u201cWe talked and we cried and he gave me good memories \u2013 just old stories of my dad, him growing up, and how they stuck together,\u201d Childs said.<\/p>\n Black spent more than three decades on death row before he was killed by lethal injection on August 5, 2025, at Tennessee\u2019s Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. He\u2019d been convicted in 1989 for killing his girlfriend, Angela Clay, along with her two young daughters. Black insisted he did not commit the horrific murders, but was swiftly found guilty and sentenced to die.<\/p>\n Over the decades that followed, Black\u2019s lawyers argued that his intellectual disability should have barred him from facing the death penalty. The DA\u2019s office that convicted him even conceded that they were right, but the courts disagreed. By the time Tennessee prepared to kill him<\/a>, Black had been diagnosed with dementia, kidney disease, and congestive heart failure.<\/p>\n \u201cHow would I feel knowing that this is my last day on earth?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Defense attorneys argued that Black\u2019s poor health put him at serious risk of a tortuous execution, raising specific concerns over his implanted heart defibrillator and pacemaker. Experts warned that the device could deliver painful shocks before he died. To their dismay, Black did suffer<\/a> on the gurney \u2013 although not for the reasons they most feared. Prison staff struggled to insert an IV in Black\u2019s arm, spilling blood on the floor. The drug that was supposed to kill him \u2013 a massive dose of the fast-acting barbiturate pentobarbital \u2013 did not work as intended. Media witnesses said they could hear Black moaning in pain.<\/p>\n Childs was not at the prison on the morning his father was killed. He was at home in Nashville after a sleepless night. \u201cYou know, I\u2019m putting myself in his shoes,\u201d he said. \u201cHow would I feel knowing that this is my last day on earth?\u201d It wasn\u2019t until he watched a local news segment that Childs learned things had not gone well. \u201cIt messed me up, I ain\u2019t gonna lie,\u201d he said. \u201cI can\u2019t imagine being there, viewing this, seeing this happen.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Black\u2019s execution reignited controversy over capital punishment in Tennessee, where advocates had warned against executing him with a new protocol that had not been subjected<\/a> to legal review. The one-drug pentobarbital method had been introduced by the state following complications<\/a> with its previous, three-drug formula, which was itself adopted despite ample warnings that it violated<\/a> the 8th Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Nevertheless, Tennessee pressed forward \u2013 with disturbingly predictable results.<\/p>\n On May 21, just nine months after Black\u2019s painful death, Tennessee attempted to kill 57-year-old Tony Carruthers, convicted in 1996<\/a> of a triple murder he swore he did not commit. As in Black\u2019s case, prison staff tried clumsily to place the IV lines for lethal injection. But this time they never finished. Carruthers spent 40 minutes being poked and prodded, only for a physician to enter the chamber and attempt to place what is known as a central line in his chest. The descriptions of what followed were harrowing. As Carruthers\u2019s attorney, Maria DeLiberato would later write<\/a>, \u201cI saw the process unraveling with my own eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe executioners draped Mr. Carruthers in a blue surgical cloth with a hole for his face,\u201d she wrote. \u201cWhen the doctor prodded Mr. Carruthers\u2019s chest with a scalpel or large needle, Mr. Carruthers cried out in pain. But the doctor continued to push into his chest. Mr. Carruthers started groaning\u2026 I told him that I was sorry. Mostly, I tried to hold his gaze and reassure him that we were still fighting for him.\u201d<\/p>\n The ordeal ended only after the governor himself finally intervened, issuing an executive order<\/a> putting off Carruthers\u2019s execution for a year.<\/p>\n The temporary reprieve raised hopes that Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee might put all executions on hold. Instead, the state soon announced it intended to proceed with the next one. Before long, officials at the Department of Correction were preparing to kill 66-year-old Anthony Darrell Hines. He is set to die on Thursday at 10 a.m. \u2013 one of three people scheduled to be put to death in the U.S. on the same day.<\/p>\n It was Hines\u2019s<\/span> looming execution date that prompted Childs to speak publicly again about his own father\u2019s death. This past weekend, he joined anti-death penalty activists for a protest<\/a> known as the \u201cMarch 4 Mercy.\u201d On the Sunday before every execution, activists walk nine miles from the prison on the city\u2019s west side, to the Tennessee State Capitol downtown. With temperatures in the 90s and the air thick with humidity, the marchers were drenched in sweat as they made their way across town. Walking at a steady pace, Childs held up a sign for passing cars that read \u201cJustice Requires Mercy\u201d and \u201cBlessed Are the Merciful.\u201d<\/p>\n Childs could not begin to comprehend what had happened to Carruthers. But he also couldn\u2019t shake the mental torture of a looming execution over everybody involved. It must impact everyone, he said, including the people witnessing and carrying it out. \u201cSome of those people probably never want to do that again.\u201d<\/p>\n Tennessee\u2019s persistence in carrying out lethal injection is part of a recent spike<\/a> in executions in the U.S. In Oklahoma, at the same time as Hines is set to be put to death, executioners plan to kill 70-year-old Carlos Cuesta Rodriguez inside the state\u2019s death chamber in McAlester. Then, at 6 p.m., Alabama intends to execute 41-year-old Jeremy Williams at Holman Penitentiary in Atmore.<\/p>\n The last time the country saw three executions scheduled for the same day was in 2018, when Alabama, Texas, and Florida were supposed to kill<\/a> three different men. Only one execution moved forward that day; in Texas, the governor granted a rare clemency request. In Alabama, which intended to execute Doyle Hamm, a terminally ill man in his 60s, the lethal injection was suddenly stopped because of problems setting IV lines. It was the first in a series of botched executions that would make Alabama infamous for torturing people condemned to die.<\/p>\n Although Tennessee has made the most recent headlines following its disastrous attempt to kill Tony Carruthers, both Oklahoma and Alabama have long been known for their own ugly track records. It was Oklahoma, after all, where a medical examiner first invented the three-drug protocol that originally comprised lethal injection, later griping that he never intended<\/a> for it to be managed so incompetently. After the state made international headlines for the harrowing 2014 execution of Clayton Lockett, famed death row prisoner Richard Glossip<\/a> was nearly executed using the same method the following year \u2013 only to be spared at the last minute<\/a> after officials realized they had procured the wrong drug. Glossip, who has insisted on his innocence for three decades, was released on bail earlier this year to await a new trial.<\/p>\n In Alabama, after officials were forced to call off<\/a> Hamm\u2019s execution, the state took three hours to place IV lines in the body of a man named Joe James, whose execution is believed to be<\/strong> the longest<\/a> in U.S. history. The state\u2019s ongoing inability to carry out lethal injection ultimately led to a cruel new invention for executions: death by nitrogen hypoxia<\/a>. Earlier this year, a judge declared the method<\/a> unconstitutional, prompting the state to revert back to lethal injection.<\/p>\n In many ways, the controversy looming over Hines\u2019s scheduled execution is a variation on a very old story. Lethal injection may be cloaked in the veneer of a surgical procedure \u2013 the doctor who tried to help the state kill Carruthers referred to him as a \u201cpatient\u201d \u2013 but, in reality, it has always been a crude human experiment, using the tools of medicine in order to kill. In Tennessee, concerns over potential pain and suffering during lethal injection have prompted some people facing execution to instead choose the electric chair.<\/p>\n But lethal injection remains the prevailing method \u2013 and lawyers have little recourse when it comes to fighting against it. Years of U.S. Supreme Court rulings have inoculated lethal injection against legal challenges, no matter how much evidence reveals it to be torture. As Justice Samuel Alito reasoned more than a decade ago in upholding Oklahoma\u2019s three-drug protocol, preserving the death penalty is ultimately more important than devising a humane way to kill the condemned. \u201cBecause capital punishment is constitutional,\u201d he wrote<\/a> in 2015, \u201cthere must be a constitutional means of carrying it out.\u201d<\/p>\n There is one<\/span> way in which Tennessee\u2019s current lethal injection controversy is different from what came before. Despite the state\u2019s attempts to keep the identities of executioners secret, the doctor who tried to assist in the killing of Tony Carruthers was revealed earlier this year as Dr. Mark Fowler, whose medical background includes working in an emergency room as well as, more recently, according to a profile in the Guardian<\/a>, \u201cweight loss and aesthetic clinics.\u201d Fowler also writes opinion columns<\/a> \u201cfor his local newspaper, the Union City Daily Messenger, that are reproduced by the conservative blog the Patriot Post.\u201d<\/p>\n Most alarming for those facing execution, Fowler also lacks the qualifications to do what the job entails, according to attorneys for Hines. Last year he admitted under oath<\/a> that he had not placed a central line in 13 years and lacked the privilege to do so at a hospital. Yet the Department of Correction has refused to assure attorneys that they will not rely on him. The department \u201cknows that Dr. Fowler can\u2019t do the job the protocol requires him to do,\u201d Hines\u2019s lawyer said in press statement this week, \u201cand we\u2019ve seen what that means in practice: a torturous, failed procedure that leaves staff, witnesses, and the prisoner traumatized.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
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