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       #Post#: 498--------------------------------------------------
       ~ Oscar Smith, (TN) ~
       By: BuzzC Date: March 8, 2022, 1:42 pm
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       Death row inmate Oscar Franklin Smith set to be executed in
       Tennessee next month--
       March 7th, 2022
       [IMG]
  HTML https://www.wkrn.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/73/2020/03/Oscar-Smith.jpg?w=640&h=360&crop=1[/img]
       After a nearly two-year hiatus, Tennessee is set to resume
       capital punishment with five executions scheduled for this year
       and the first set to take place next month.
       Oscar Franklin Smith, 71, is the next death row inmate slated to
       be executed. Convicted in the 1989 triple slaying of his
       estranged wife and her two teenage sons, Smith is scheduled to
       die April 21.
       Smith has had two execution dates rescheduled since the start of
       the coronavirus pandemic.
       As of Friday, he was one of 47 people on death row in the state.
       Tennessee has executed 139 people since 1916.
       The last took place in February 2020, before the COVID-19
       pandemic. The state resumed capital punishment in 2018 after a
       nine-year break.
       State law allows condemned inmates sentenced to death for a
       crime that took place before 1999 to choose between
       electrocution and the state's default execution method of lethal
       injection.
       Smith has not yet announced his decision.
       The men who chose electrocution in the past were among dozens of
       death row inmates who challenged Tennessee's lethal injection
       drugs in court, saying the method amounts to state-sanctioned
       torture. Medical experts say Tennessee's three-drug lethal
       injection protocol creates the sensation of drowning and burning
       alive.
       If Smith is put to death next month by means of the electric
       chair, he will be the sixth Tennessee inmate executed by
       electrocution since 2018.
       Amy Harwell, a federal public defender who serves as Smith's
       attorney, said in the fall after the state set her client's new
       execution date that she took issue with Tennessee's plan to
       execute him by lethal injection.
       “Less than a week after the state of Oklahoma experienced the
       botched execution of John Grant, Tennessee has rushed to set an
       execution date. Tennessee proposes to kill Mr. Smith using the
       same three-drug protocol that caused Mr. Grant to seize,
       convulse and vomit before becoming unconscious," Harwell said in
       a statement. "Federal litigation remains pending on the
       Tennessee Department of Corrections’ use of this controversial
       execution protocol."
       She also criticized the move to set Smith's execution date,
       saying there are still "serious questions as to the reliability
       of his conviction and sentence."
       "Oscar Smith must not be executed before a fair hearing on his
       claim that the fingerprint evidence in his case was not accurate
       or reliable," she said. "The fingerprint examiner has been shown
       to have made multiple errors about print identification in this
       case, including failing to identify his own fingerprint."
       At age 40, Smith was convicted of murder in the Oct. 1, 1989,
       killings of his estranged wife, Judy Lynn Smith, 35, and her
       sons Chad Burnett, 16, and Jason Burnett, 13, in Nashville.
       Their brutal deaths took place inside a home on Lutie Court in
       the city's Woodbine neighborhood.
       Smith, a former machinist from Robertson County, shot his
       estranged wife in the neck then stabbed her several times. He
       shot her eldest son in the left eye and then in the upper chest
       and left torso. Her younger son was stabbed in the neck and
       abdomen.
       At the time of the killings, Smith was separated from his wife.
       Co-workers said Smith threatened to kill her on at least 12
       occasions between June and August 1989. Smith told one he
       threatened to kill the boys because he said she was better to
       them than she was to his twin children from his first marriage.
       Smith took the stand at trial and denied his involvement in the
       killings.
       He didn't convince the jury.
       8)
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