This story was originally published by the Nashville Banner. Sign up for their newsletter at nashvillebanner.com/newsletters.
Sometime on May 8, two weeks before his scheduled execution, Oscar Smith was moved away from the other men on death row and into almost complete isolation. Until he is moved again, to a small cell near the execution chamber, his only human interactions will be with his legal team, a spiritual advisor and the prison staff assigned to monitor him around the clock and record all of his activities.
He has been on death watch before. In April 2022, he came within around an hour of his execution before learning, while taking a last communion, that he’d received a last-minute reprieve. But three years later, under Tennessee’s new lethal injection protocol, the liminal period between life on death row and execution has been stretched.
“Now, it’s just two weeks of being reminded every second of every day that the state is going to kill you,” one of Smith’s attorneys, Nashville-based supervisory assistant federal public defender Kelley Henry, told the Nashville Banner. “Just watching the hours tick down.”
As written, the protocol also further isolates the condemned person in the 12 hours before an execution, allowing no phone calls or visits except for those from the person’s attorney. The state agreed recently to some religious accommodations that will enable a minister to be with Smith in his final hours and minutes.