This story was originally published by the Nashville Banner. Sign up for their newsletter at nashvillebanner.com/newsletters.
On Aug. 5, executioners at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution plan to inject 68-year-old Byron Black with a lethal dose of pentobarbital, carrying out the death sentence handed down by a Nashville jury in 1989. But as the drug works to kill him, Black’s attorneys argue in a new court filing, the implantable cardioverter-defibrillator that was placed in his chest last year to manage his congestive heart failure will shock his heart repeatedly, attempting to restore its normal rhythm.
That’s why Black’s attorneys are asking a Davidson County Chancery Court judge to order the Tennessee Department of Correction to ensure the device is properly deactivated by a cardiologist or by a specialized technician at the moment of his execution. Kelley Henry, one of the Nashville-based federal public defenders representing Black, said this appears to be the first time the grimly peculiar scenario has ever been litigated.
“Unless the ICD is properly deactivated at the moment of execution, Byron Black’s execution will be a gruesome spectacle,” Henry said in a statement accompanying the filing. “The TDOC implanted this device, and it now wants to torture Mr. Black to death as his heart restarts, prolonging the execution and increasing the likelihood of excruciating pain due to flash pulmonary edema.”