Citing new DNA findings from crime scene evidence, lawyers for Tennessee
death-row prisoner Oscar Smith have asked a Nashville trial court to halt his scheduled execution and reopen the case against him.

In a motion filed April 4, 2022 in the Davidson County Criminal Court, Smith’s legal team argued that evidence from “touch DNA” — a new DNA testing technology — “definitively excluded” Smith and suggested that another, unknown male was involved in the murders for which their client was convicted.

Smith, who has consistently maintained his innocence, was sentenced to death for killing his estranged wife and her two sons in 1989. The three were shot and stabbed with a knife and an awl, the only murder weapon recovered from the crime scene. In January 2022, with the agreement of both prosecutors and the defense, the trial court released the awl for testing with the touch DNA technology.

“The significance of this result cannot be overstated,” Smith’s lawyers wrote in the motion. “Oscar Smith has, using his new touch DNA technology, demonstrated that he is not the person who used the awl to kill his family.”

Smith is scheduled to be executed April 21, 2022.

“DNA evidence shows that an unknown assailant — not Mr. Smith — used the bloody murder weapon found at the crime scene to murder Mr. Smith’s family,” Smith’s lawyer, Assistant Federal Defender Amy D. Harwell, said. “New technology makes it possible to identify the unknown person’s DNA. Mr. Smith has steadfastly maintained his innocence since his arrest in 1989 — unable, until now, to scientifically prove that he was not the killer.”

Smith, 71, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on April 21. His legal team has previously appealed to reopen the case, citing errors made by the crime scene investigator who testified for the prosecution. The investigator testified that a bloody palm print found on the sheet next to one of the victims was missing two fingers and that there was “no doubt” the print belonged to Smith, who is missing two fingers on his left hand.

Defense lawyers have argued that the prosecution expert made “egregious” errors, including leaving his own fingerprints on the awl, and that his “incompetence and lack of professionalism” makes the identification testimony suspect and unreliable. The motion said that the touch DNA evidence excluding Smith and implicating another person further undermines the prosecution’s palm print testimony, which defense lawyers called the state’s “most important piece of evidence.”

The trial court previously rejected that argument, and its ruling was affirmed in March 2022 by the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals.

“While procedural technicalities have thus far prevented the courts from reviewing new evidence that shows the fingerprint examiner who identified Mr. Smith overstated the case, an unknown person’s DNA on the murder weapon must be fully considered by the courts,” Harwell said in a statement.

Smith is also part of a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the state’s execution protocol. Tennessee uses a three-drug protocol of midazolam, a sedative; vecuronium bromide, a paralytic; and potassium chloride, which stops the prisoner’s heart. The suit sets forth a variety of concerns about the protocol, including that midazolam is unsuitable for use in executions and that the state was aware of problems with the preparation of its potassium chloride but failed to disclose those problems to the prisoners and the courts.

The U.S. Supreme Court requires prisoners who challenge the constitutionality of a state’s execution method to propose an alternate method by which the state can take their life. Smith offered execution by firing squad as his alternative to lethal injection. If the execution goes forward, it would be Tennessee’s first since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.