A Tennessee death row inmate cried out in pain after the state refused to deactivate his implanted defibrillator as he was executed for murdering his girlfriend and her two young daughters.
Byron Black, 69, was pronounced dead at 10:43 a.m., about 10 minutes after receiving a lethal injection at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, according to state correctional officials.
The convicted murderer was put to death despite a legal battle over concerns his heart device would repeatedly shock him once the lethal chemicals spread throughout his body.
“Oh, it’s hurting so bad,” Black moaned as he lay with his hands and chest restrained.
Black — who was sentenced to death for the fatal 1988 shootings of Angela Clay, 29, and her two daughters, Latoya, 9, and Lakeisha, 6 — had no final words before he was strapped to a gurney.
His spiritual advisor, who was singing during the execution, told him: “I’m so sorry. Just listen to my voice.”
Black’s attorney said a review of the defibrillator will be conducted as part of an autopsy.
“The fact that he was able to raise his head several times and express pain tells you that the pentobarbital was not acting the way that state’s experts claim it acts,” attorney Kelley Henry said.
“Today, the state of Tennessee killed a gentle, kind, fragile, intellectually disabled man in a violation of the laws of our country simply because they could.”
With Post wires.
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