NASHVILLE – The state is seeking a new execution date for Edward Jerome Harbison after a federal judge dismissed his lawsuit challenging Tennessee’s lethal injection protocols.
Harbison was sentenced to death for beating an elderly woman to death during a burglary in 1983 in Chattanooga. He had been scheduled to be executed in January 2008 but had won a stay pending his claims.
U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger ruled in 2007 that Tennessee’s lethal injection process violated Harbison’s Eighth Amendment right to freedom from cruel and unusual punishment.
At the time, many executions nationwide had been put on hold while the U.S. Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of the three-drug cocktail used for lethal injection.
The Supreme Court in 2008 upheld Kentucky’s lethal injection process, which is similar to Tennessee’s.