Amy Howe

Apr 21 2022

Court rejects bid to block Tennessee execution, but inmate gets reprieve when state discovers last-minute “oversight”

The Supreme Court on Thursday declined to block the execution of Tennessee inmate Oscar Smith, who had been scheduled to die at 8 p.m. EDT. However, shortly after the justices turned down Smith’s appeal, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee called off the execution, citing an “oversight” in the preparations for the lethal injection.

Smith was convicted for the 1989 shooting death of his estranged wife, Judy, and for shooting and stabbing to death her two teenaged sons, Chad and Jason Burnett. Smith had asked the justices to put his execution on hold and allow him to present new DNA evidence that he says proves his innocence.

Smith contended that new technology has revealed the DNA of an unidentified person on the handle of an awl – a small, pointed tool used for piercing holes – found at the crime scene. He told the justices that he could not have raised this issue in an earlier petition for post-conviction relief because the technology to isolate the DNA was not available at the time. Allowing his execution to go forward without giving him a hearing to fully develop his claim of innocence would violate the Constitution’s guarantee of due process and its ban on cruel and unusual punishment, Smith’s attorneys wrote.

Emphasizing that “Smith’s case has been thoroughly litigated over a span of three decades,” Tennessee urged the justices to allow Smith’s execution to go forward. The DNA evidence that Smith now offers, the state wrote, shows only what Smith has long argued – that someone else had touched the awl, and that his fingerprints were not on it. Moreover, the state stressed, the awl was not, as Smith suggested, the murder weapon. (A knife and a gun were used in the killings but were never found.) And, the state argued, a wealth of other evidence establishes Smith’s guilt.

In a brief, unsigned order issued shortly before 6 p.m. EDT, the court turned down Smith’s request without explanation. There were no recorded dissents from the ruling.

It was the second emergency appeal on Thursday in which the justices declined to block an execution. Shortly before ruling in Smith’s case, the court allowed the execution of Carl Buntion to go forward in Texas.

This post is also published on SCOTUSblog.

Amy L Howe
Until September 2016, Amy served as the editor and reporter for SCOTUSblog, a blog devoted to coverage of the Supreme Court of the United States; she continues to serve as an independent contractor and reporter for SCOTUSblog. Before turning to full-time blogging, she served as counsel in over two dozen merits cases at the Supreme Court and argued two cases there. From 2004 until 2011, she co-taught Supreme Court litigation at Stanford Law School; from 2005 until 2013, she co-taught a similar class at Harvard Law School. She has also served as an adjunct professor at American University’s Washington College of Law and Vanderbilt Law School. Amy is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and holds a master’s degree in Arab Studies and a law degree from Georgetown University.
Tweets by @AHoweBlogger
Recent ScotusBlog Posts from Amy
  • Court declines to block execution of Texas man who argued that jurors engaged in anti-Hispanic bias
  • Court schedules final two argument sessions of 2022-23 term
  • Justices request federal government’s views on Texas and Florida social-media laws
More from Amy Howe

Recent Posts

  • Court declines to block execution of Texas man who argued that jurors engaged in anti-Hispanic bias
  • Court schedules final two argument sessions of 2022-23 term
  • Justices request federal government’s views on Texas and Florida social-media laws
  • Justices were not asked to swear under penalty of perjury that they didn’t leak Dobbs opinion
  • Supreme Court investigators fail to identify who leaked Dobbs opinion
Site built and optimized by Sound Strategies