After a three-year delay, the state will resume executions of death row inmates this year.
Officials with the Tennessee Administrative Office of the Courts confirmed yesterday that the state plans to execute ten death row inmates in the next two years. The Tennessean newspaper reports the state has scheduled three executions for this year, seven for next year.
Last September, the state changed the drug protocol that will now be used in lethal injections. Pharmaceutical companies stopped offering the drug sodium thiopental in 2011.
A Davidson County judge has been asked to halt the executions because of questions about the new drug.
Death row inmate Nickolus Johnson is scheduled to die April 22nd.