NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Two of the people most responsible for overseeing Tennessee’s lethal injection drugs “incorrectly testified” under oath that they were testing the chemicals for bacterial contamination, the state attorney general’s office conceded in a court filing.
The revelation comes on the heels of an independent report that found Tennessee has never fully tested drugs for its executions since rewriting the state’s lethal injection protocol in 2018.
The Tennessee Department of Correction fired its top attorney and inspector general in the wake of the report.
State officials will try to craft a new protocol for putting inmates to death that addresses what went wrong as Tennessee’s pause on executions, initially prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic, stretches on. Key agreements in federal court likely will keep executions off the table until a new protocol is established and any ensuing legal challenges play out.
The state’s admission last week about the testimony in the handling of the deadly drugs came in a court challenge court challenge by a death row inmate, Donald Middlebrooks. The state employee tasked with finding the drugs and the private-sector pharmacist who provides them were singled out in the state’s filings for incorrectly testifying in July 2021 depositions.