Here are the people scheduled to be executed this year on Tennessee's death row

The Tennessee Supreme Court set execution dates for four people on death row in 2025. Oscar Franklin Smith's execution May 22 was the first in five years.

A judge has temporarily called off one man's execution set for this year, unless his lawsuit concludes before his execution date.

All four people whose execution dates were set already had execution dates before Gov. Bill Lee paused capital punishment in 2022. It was later found the state wasn't following its own lethal injection protocol. The pause was lifted in December when the Tennessee Department of Correction announced it had finalized a new lethal injection protocol.

Tennessee currently has 43 men and one woman on death row. Here is a closer look at the four cases set for execution this year:

Oscar Franklin Smith: Executed May 22

The state of Tennessee executed Oscar Franklin Smith, 75, on May 22 through a fatal dose of pentobarbital.

Smith was set to be executed in 2022, but Gov. Bill Lee in the 11th hour called for a temporary reprieve to review the state's lethal injection protocol. A state-commissioned report later revealed corrections officials had failed to follow their own protocol for testing lethal injection drugs since 2018.

Smith was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder in the 1989 Nashville killings of his estranged wife, Judith Robirds Smith, 35, and her sons Chad Burnett, 16, and Jason Burnett, 13. 

Smith, a former machinist from Robertson County, shot Robirds Smith in the neck and stabbed her several times. He shot her eldest son, and stabbed her younger son in the neck and abdomen.

Byron Lewis Black: Execution date Aug. 5

Black, 69, shot and killed his girlfriend Angela Clay, 29, and her daughters, Latoya, 9, and Lakesha, 6, in their Nashville home in 1987.

Prosecutors said Black was in a jealous rage when he committed the murders. He was set for execution in 2022 before the governor put a pause on capital punishment.

Black’s case, however, could see more delays as his lawyers have long argued that he is severely intellectually disabled.

In 2022, Davidson County District Attorney Glenn Funk declared Black intellectually disabled and said his death sentence should be commuted. The Tennessee Court of Appeals later denied Black’s request for a hearing on his intellectual disability claim.

Bennie Clay, who was the father of Angela’s two daughters, said he believes Black deserves to pay for his crimes.

“My kids, they were babies,” Bennie Clay said in an interview. “They were smart, they were gonna be something. They never got the chance.”

Donald Ray Middlebrooks: Execution provisionally called off

While the Tennessee Supreme Court set an execution date for Middlebrooks of Sept. 24, a federal judge on April 1 ordered it be delayed if his lawsuit hasn't been wrapped up. Middlebrooks is challenging the constitutionality of the state's new execution protocol.

Middlebrooks, 62, was convicted for the 1987 torture and murder of 14-year-old Kerrick Majors, whose body was found in a dry creek bed in East Nashville. Prosecutors said the killing was racially motivated, as Majors was Black.

Middlebrooks, who was 24 at the time, his wife, Tammy Middlebrooks, 17, and a friend, Roger Brewington, 16, chased Majors from a makeshift flea market in Nashville and dragged him into a wooded area, where he was tortured for several hours before being stabbed to death. The defendants, who were white, also used racial epithets toward Majors, prosecutors said.

Brewington was tried as an adult and received consecutive life sentences. Tammy Middlebrooks was sentenced to life in prison.

The Tennessee Supreme Court initially reversed Middlebrooks' death sentence in 1992, and he was given a second death sentence in Nashville.

Harold Wayne Nichols: Execution date Dec. 11

Nichols, 64, pleaded guilty to the rape and murder of 21-year-old Chattanooga college student Karen Pulley in 1988.

Nichols has said he wants to die by electric chair if his execution goes forward. Court records state he hit her on the head with a board, causing Pulley to die of blunt force trauma a day later. A jury sentenced him to death for the slaying.

He was scheduled for execution in August 2020 before the governor halted the death penalty due to the pandemic, and again in 2022, but that execution was called off after Lee's announcement.