A Tennessee man, Byron Black, who expressed severe pain during his execution this week, did not receive shocks from his implanted defibrillator, according to his attorney.
Kelley Henry, Black’s federal public defender, reported that her team reviewed preliminary data from his implantable cardioverter defibrillator.
The information from the defibrillator rules out one potential reason for Black’s expression of pain during his lethal injection on Tuesday, such as when he raised his head and groaned, Henry stated. However, she added that numerous questions remain unresolved.
“It’s clear from our observation that pentobarbital did not function as the State’s expert claimed,” Henry mentioned in a statement. She emphasized that Black endured significant suffering.
Black was put to death following legal deliberations on whether his ICD needed deactivation, with concerns it could trigger painful shocks in response to cardiac arrest as the drugs were used, potentially extending the process.
Henry indicated that it will take about eight to 12 weeks for the autopsy results. Additionally, her team plans to file public records requests to understand the events better. Part of this involves accessing Black’s electrocardiograph data from the execution.
A Tennessee Department of Correction spokesperson referred a request to comment about the ICD findings to the attorney general’s office, which did not immediately respond to an email.
Black was convicted in the 1988 shooting deaths of his girlfriend Angela Clay, 29, and her two daughters, Latoya Clay, 9, and Lakeisha Clay, 6. Prosecutors said he was in a jealous rage when he shot the three at their home. At the time, Black was on work-release while serving time for shooting Clay’s estranged husband.
Black died at 10:43 a.m. on Tuesday, prison officials said. It was about 10 minutes after the execution started and Black talked about being in pain.
Ahead of that, when he was asked for any last words, he replied, “No sir.”
Black looked around the room as the execution began, lifting his head off the gurney multiple times, and could be heard sighing and breathing heavily. All seven media witnesses to the execution agreed he appeared to be in discomfort.
“Oh, it’s hurting so bad,” Black said, as he lay with his hands and chest restrained to the gurney, a sheet covering up past his lower half, and an IV line in his right arm visible to media witnesses.
“I’m so sorry. Just listen to my voice,” a spiritual adviser in the death chamber with him responded.
In mid-July, a trial court judge agreed with Black’s attorneys and ordered officials to have the defibrillator deactivated. But Tennessee’s Supreme Court overturned that decision last Thursday, saying the other judge lacked authority to order the change.
The state disputed that the lethal injection would cause Black’s defibrillator to shock him and said he wouldn’t feel them regardless.
Black, 69, was in a wheelchair, suffering from dementia, brain damage, kidney failure, congestive heart failure and other conditions, his attorneys have said.
The nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center said it’s unaware of any other cases with similar claims to Black’s about ICDs or pacemakers. Black’s attorneys said they haven’t found a comparable case, either.
Henry also said officials struggled to insert an IV into his left side, and used some kind of medical device, presumably to find a usable vein, Henry said. They seemed to have no trouble getting an IV into Black’s right side, she said.
That process is not viewed by media witnesses, whose perspective begins when Black is already strapped in and hooked up to IV lines on the gurney.
