The history of racism in Tennessee executions is why capital punishment is unjust

• Demetrius Minor is the National Manager of Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty.
• Davis Turner is a retired attorney, whose brother was murdered in Nashville in 2009, and serves on the board of Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

The Tennessee Department of Correction is currently working to develop a new lethal injection protocol, though the process is cloaked in secrecy. Tennessee should not join states like Alabama and South Carolina in tinkering with execution protocols and spending years and millions of taxpayer dollars in litigation over the new protocols when we have alternative sentences that can keep the public safe.

A recent report from the non-partisan Death Penalty Information Center sheds light on the history we need to learn about Tennessee’s death penalty. The report traces the legacy of lynchings and racial discrimination in Tennessee and shows that uneven justice continues to delegitimize the state’s capital punishment system in the present day.  

Tennessee was the site of 236 lynchings – and those are just the ones we know about. Some people ask why what happened a long time ago should still matter today. But a nationwide study of death sentences between 1989 and 2017 found a strong statistical relationship between a state’s history of lynching and the number of death sentences imposed on Black defendants. The past continues to influence our present. Just this year a Tennessee lawmaker publicly suggested adding “hanging by a tree” to the state’s execution methods. 

More:Tennessee lawmaker apologizes after suggesting 'hanging by tree' as method of execution

Racial bias creeps into death penalty decisions

As DPIC’s report documents, prosecutors are more likely to seek the death penalty and juries are more likely to impose it when the victim is white. Of all the death sentences imposed in Tennessee since 1972, 74% have involved white victims. Until the state can eradicate racial bias from the administration of the death penalty – which is not possible – it shouldn’t use it. 

The issues highlighted in this report are among the growing list of concerns that conservatives have about the death penalty, among them are the risk of executing the innocent (192 exonerations since 1972), the financial costs, and the toll the decades long process takes on victims’ families.

This issue should concern every Tennessean. For one thing, the protocols are being developed without sufficient transparency. Tennessee officials also lied about following their execution protocols, adding to concerns about secrecy and incompetence. On something as serious as the government’s power to take a life, the public has a right to know whether and how TDOC will follow the law.

Additionally, the person Gov. Bill Lee hired to “fix” Tennessee’s death penalty system, TDOC Commissioner Frank Strada, oversaw three botched executions in Arizona the year before he took the job. As conservatives, we question whether the government is competent to carry out executions, and this record is not encouraging.

There is also the matter of cost. Between October 2020 and January 2021, Arizona paid $1.5 million for 1,000 grams of a lethal injection drug. This cost does not include other expenses associated with preparing or administering the drug. As conservatives, we question the amount of money the state plans to spend on this protocol, particularly since the public does not have access to this cost because of the secrecy law.

Justice is unevenly applied in Tennessee

Finally, new protocols won’t address the fact that justice continues to be unevenly applied in our current death penalty system. If the state cannot treat people the same under the law, it should get out of the business of life-and-death. 

As lawmakers and Tennesseans consider restarting executions, they would do well to learn the lessons from our history and choose a better path forward. 

Learning more

The American Baptist College Presidential Lecture Series, Doomed to Repeat: The Legacy of Race in Tennessee’s Death Penalty and Criminal Legal System is a six-week speaker series that will be 6 p.m. Fridays through Nov. 17 at Susie McClure Library, American Baptist College, 1800 Baptist World Center, Nashville.

Demetrius Minor is the National Manager of Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, and Davis Turner is a retired attorney, whose brother was murdered in Nashville in 2009, and serves on the board of Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.