Tennessee inmate's heart device must be turned off before execution to avoid shock risk, judge rules

Turning off inmate’s heart device to avoid shock risk at execution would cause chaos, Tennessee attorneys say

A judge’s order to take a Tennessee death row inmate to the hospital on the morning of his execution so doctors can deactivate his heart-regulating implant would cause “chaos,” state attorneys said in an appeal. The argument was one of several in a filing Wednesday that seeks to overturn an order to deactivate Byron Black’s…

Read More
Tennessee inmate's heart device must be turned off before execution to avoid shock risk, judge rules

Tennessee inmate’s heart device must be turned off before execution to avoid shock risk, judge rules

Tennessee officials must deactivate a death-row inmate’s implanted heart-regulating device to avert the risk that it might try to shock him during his lethal injection, a judge ruled Friday. The order by Nashville Chancellor Russell Perkins comes ahead of the Aug. 5 execution of Byron Black. Black’s attorneys have said that the implantable cardioverter-defibrillator could…

Read More