Now on Death Watch, Oscar Smith spends his last days before the execution is isolated

This story was originally published by the Nashville Banner. Register for your newsletter at nashvillebanner.com/newsletters.

At some point on May 8, two weeks before his planned execution, Oscar Smith was removed by the other men in the death cell and almost complete isolation. Until he has moved back into a small cell near the facility chamber, his only human interactions will be with his legal team, a spiritual consultant and the prison staff who monitor him around the clock and record all of his activities.

He was already on Death Watch. In April 2022 he came before learning within an hour after his execution, while taking over a last community that he had received a last minute postponement. But three years later, the border period between life in the death cell and the execution was stretched three years later.

“Now there are only two weeks that every second is reminded of every day that the state will kill them,” said one of Smith's lawyers, deputy federal defender Kelley Henry, the Nashville Banner in Nashville. “Only the hours tick.”

As written, the protocol also isolates the convicted person in the 12 hours before execution and does not allow any calls or visits with the exception of those from the person's lawyer. The state recently approved some religious accommodations that will enable a minister to be at Smith in its last hours and minutes.

“It feels in retribution”

Smith has been in the death cell for almost 35 years since a jury in Nashville was sentenced to death for the murders of his alienated wife Judy Smith and her two sons, Chad and Jason Burnett. They were shot and stabbed in a wooden house. Smith testified in his process that he had nothing to do with the murders and has been innocent since then. His lawyers have argued in recent years that his conviction was “based on an impossible theory of persecution that has been conflict with the physical evidence”. But the courts have confirmed his conviction and death sentence, and he exhausted his appeals. If his execution occurs on Thursday as planned, this will be the first in Tennessee for more than five years.

While the historical Spree of seven executions that Tennessee were carried out between August 9, 2018 and February 20, 2020, the men in the death cell had developed a kind of ritual before one was brought into the death guard among them. The men often gathered on Monday evening to say goodbye to share a final meal and spend some time with external visitors. The new protocol has changed all of this for reasons that remain unclear. In response to a question about the argument behind the changes, the TDOC spokesman Dorinda Carter said that the protocols were revised “to ensure that lawful and effective procedures are followed when carrying out death sentences”.

“There was never a problem in the two weeks up to an execution date, and there has never been a problem with the death guard,” said Henry. “It feels in retribution.”

The two-week isolation and observation period, said Henry, was “his own form of torture” and “completely unnecessary”.

The Rev. Dr. Kevin Riggs, pastor in the Franklin Community Church and a spiritual advisor to several men in the death cell, told the banner that the new protocols of the state were free of charge.

“I know that people will say: 'Well, he took the life of some people and their family members also had no chance of telling them bye,” he said. “But our judicial system is not based in the way you treated someone else. We shouldn't lower the same level as someone who committed a crime. We should be better than that.”

A legal challenge

Smith is one of nine inmates that sue the state on the new protocol and argues that the use of pentobarbital could lead to a quedling death. The lawsuit also questions the constitutionality of what it describes as a “12-hour blackout policy”. Due to the prohibition of a person who has exposed itself from the execution of communication with someone other than their lawyer, the state limits its right to freedom of expression and religious practice.

However, the protocol also leaves the enforcement of this “12-hour blackout” until the discretion of un areolated prison officers. In a letter submitted in court this week, Rivanbend Maximum Security Institution Warteneth Nelsen contained the accommodations that he had approved for Grant Smith. This includes a minister to have contact visits to Smith's face to face and not to serve communion through a cell window and him on the day of his execution. The supervisor also agreed to pray the minister loudly after Smith submitted a final explanation and angered his forehead with olive oil. During the execution, the minister, as the pentobarbital comes into force, can put a hand on Smith's shoulder and “quietly … but to hear loud enough for Mr. Smith”.

While Smith's religious inquiries were given, Henry said that this dynamic makes this part of the protocol unsustainable.

“The protocol on the face says that this will not happen,” she said. “So it will always have grown from the grace of the supervisor and the commissioner to deviate from the protocol.”

At the moment Smith is sitting in prison in an otherwise empty pod. The officials allowed him to have a data protection screen for the time when he uses the bathroom, but everything else he does is observed and recorded by prison officers. Under the new protocol, he will be moved to a cell near the Chamber of Cremy 48 hours before his execution. When asked about his behavior, Henry said in her experience that the person who is to be executed tends to “show most grace in these last days”.

She said Smith spent thank you columns last weekend to write to them.

This article was published for the first time in Nashville Banner and will be released here under a creative commonsattribution-noderivates 4.0 International License.