By Black Star News
Photos: YouTube Screenshots
What went wrong Tuesday, in Tennessee, during what has been described as the “100% botched” execution of Byron Black?
This is the question many are asking after the execution of Black—which was characterized as a “gruesome and prolonged death.” Some want to know why Black repeatedly raised his head; cried out in pain; while also saying, “I can’t do this,” and “It hurts so bad.”
Black’s lawyer, of 25 years, Kelley Henry, told The Guardian newspaper, “Something went horribly, horribly wrong, and I don’t know what it is yet, and all I could do was take notes and watch. For him to lift his head up several times and say it hurts, I really wasn’t prepared. I could not believe it was happening. It was horrific.” Henry also said she considered the execution to be “100% botched.”
Although Black was executed by lethal injection, there are questions now revolving around whether a defibrillator, used by Black, was shocking him during the administering of the injection. An initial investigation says that “it did not shock him during the execution,”
Black, 69, was executed for allegedly murdering his former girlfriend, Angela Clay, 29, and her two daughters Latoya, nine, and Lakeisha, six. Black, who said he was innocent, was intellectually impaired from birth, due to prenatal alcohol exposure, and was exposed to toxic lead as a child. He also sustained brain injuries playing school football.
Black’s attorney, back in 1989, had argued that he was incompetent to stand trial.
Henry says she has raised the issue of Black’s intellectual impairment since she has been representing him. “Every execution takes a piece of your heart,” said Henry, who has represented other executed prisoners. “But this one hurts so much … Because I raised the intellectual disability claim when I did, he is dead. The law was wrong, the law changed, and he couldn’t get due process because we’d raised it before. And I just cannot reconcile that.”
After Black was declared dead, Henry denounced the State of Tennessee for the execution saying Black was “a gentle, kind, fragile, intellectually disabled man in violation of the laws of our country simply because they could. What happened here was the result of pure, unbridled bloodlust and cowardice. It was the brutal and unchecked abuse of government power. It was the result of a failed criminal legal system.”
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