Oscar Franklin Smith, a 75-year-old death row inmate in Tennessee, is scheduled to be executed on Thursday, May 22, 2025, for the 1989 murders of his estranged wife, Judith Robirds Smith, and her two teenage sons, Chad and Jason Burnett, in Nashville.

Smith was convicted in 1990 and sentenced to death for all three killings. His execution was previously halted in 2022 due to issues with lethal injection drugs, but Governor Bill Lee has denied a reprieve this time.

Smith will be the first person executed under Tennessee’s revised lethal injection protocol using pentobarbital, a single-dose barbiturate. He is currently suing the state over the updated protocol, arguing it fails to meet recommendations from a 2022 independent investigation. However, the trial won’t occur until next January, too late to halt his execution.

Despite ongoing claims of innocence and concerns related to a new DNA analysis, a judge previously declined to reopen Smith’s case, citing strong evidence of guilt, such as prior threats and life insurance policies.