A man executed on Tennessee’s death row showed signs of sustained cardiac activity for nearly two minutes after being pronounced dead, his attorney alleged in court on Friday. The claim raises further questions about the execution of Byron Black and intensifies scrutiny of capital punishment in the state.
Black was killed by lethal injection in August in an execution that his lawyer, Kelley Henry, described as “100% botched”. Witnesses reported that after the injection, Black began breathing and sighing loudly, groaned in agony, and repeatedly lifted his head. He was pronounced dead roughly 10 minutes after crying out in pain.
This week, Henry told a judge that an electrocardiogram showed nearly two minutes of ongoing heart activity after officials had declared Black dead. She testified in ongoing litigation challenging Tennessee’s lethal injection protocols. The Tennessee attorney general’s office and corrections department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Henry said the EKG records showed continued activity for one minute and 50 seconds after the declared time of death. At that point, the record stopped, so cardiac activity may have continued. She argued that if Black was still alive when checked, additional pentobarbital should have been administered under state protocols. The prison also closed the curtain after death was declared, potentially violating witnesses’ right to view the entire procedure.
Black was a wheelchair user with lifelong intellectual disabilities, dementia, brain damage, kidney failure, severe heart failure and prostate cancer. An autopsy revealed he developed pulmonary edema during the execution, a condition that can cause excruciating pain akin to drowning. Henry described it as “torture”. Black had been on death row for 35 years for the 1988 murders of his girlfriend and her two daughters.
