Tennessee has executed Oscar Franklin Smith for the 1989 murder of his estranged wife, 35-year-old Judith Robirds Smith, and her sons, 13-year-old Jason Burnett and 16-year-old Chad Burnett. The three were murdered inside their Nashville home, with one prosecutor saying the boys died as heroes trying to save their mom.
Smith, 75, was executed by lethal injection May 22 at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville and pronounced dead at 11:47 a.m. ET, making him the first inmate put to death by the state since 2020 and the 19th in the U.S. this year.
Smith always maintained his innocence, but police detectives and prosecutors said the evidence against him was overwhelming, including a long history of violence and threats against Robirds and his two stepsons.
“The boys were brutalized,” retired Metro Nashville Police Department Detective Pat Postiglione told The Tennessean, part of the USA TODAY Network, back in 2022. “True evil exists.”
Here’s what you need to know about Smith’s execution, including his last meal and what he was convicted of.
Oscar Franklin Smith pictured in 2021 by the Tennessee Department of Corrections.
What was Oscar Franklin Smith’s last meal?
For his last meal, Smith requested hot dogs, tater tots, and apple pie with vanilla ice cream for his last meal, Tennessee Department of Corrections spokesperson Dorinda Carter told The Tennessean.
What was Oscar Franklin Smith convicted of?
On the night of Oct. 1, 1989, a Nashville police dispatcher answered a 911 call from 13-year-old Jason Burnett, who managed to scream, “Help me!” as the garbled voice of his brother can be heard saying: “Frank, no! God help me,” according to court records.
Following the frantic call, police officers responded to the home, said they saw nothing unusual and chalked the call up to a false alarm, court records said. But inside, both boys and their mother had been murdered.
Fifteen hours after the 911 call, an 8-year-old relative found the three bodies inside the home, their throats slashed ear to ear.
Judith Robirds Smith also had a gunshot wound to the left arm and her neck, and had been stabbed multiple times, according to The Tennessean. Jason, an eighth-grader, was lying on his side at the foot of the bed where his mother was.
Chad, a high school sophomore, was found lying in a pool of blood on his back in the kitchen, court records said. He had been shot through his left eye, upper chest, and shoulder and had been stabbed several times with a sharp, needle-like weapon and with a knife
Smith was questioned by police the next day. They saw his reaction to the news of his estranged family’s murder as a red flag.
“When they told him, he showed no emotion,” former Davidson County deputy district attorney Tom Thurman told The Tennessean.
Prosecutor: the boys were ‘heroes’
On the night they were murdered, Chad and Jason Burnett spent their last breaths trying to save their mother from meeting the same fate, according to a trial prosecutor.
The boys were “heroes,” Thurman said during Smith’s 1989 trial, according to the Tennessean, part of the USA TODAY Network. Instead of escaping, both boys “chose to die defending each other and their mother.”
According to reporting from The Tennessean from the trial, the boys’ biological father, Steve Burnett, “wept silently” as he heard the tape recording of his son’s pleas for help to the 911 dispatcher.
Friends and classmates of Chad and Jason Burnett comforted each other after the brothers were buried with their mother, Judith Robirds Smith, at the Woodlawn Memorial Park Cemetery Oct. 6, 1989.
In the years following the murders, Judith Robirds Smith’s father, Don Robirds, told The Tennessean that his Christian background blinded him from seeing the abuse his daughter was suffering until it was too late.
“I’ve had some tremendous anguish about my daughter and her two sons,” he said. “Questions like, ‘What did we do wrong? Why didn’t I recognize the mindset of the abuser, my son-in-law?’ My background didn’t lend itself to that. It’s a shame it takes a tragedy to force us into these things.”
Tennessee has a new protocol
Smith was set to be executed back in 2022 before Republican Gov. Bill Lee gave him a last-minute temporary reprieve as the state reviewed its lethal injection protocols. The review followed an independent review that found that the Tennessee Department of Corrections was not consistently testing the execution drugs for potency and purity.
While the state’s previous protocol included pages of detailed instructions on procurement, storage, testing and transfer for the chemicals, the new protocol has just one page outlining details for pentobarbital.
Smith’s lawyers filed a lawsuit along with eight other death row inmates challenge Tennessee’s new protocol, saying there is a high risk of torturous death.
“We have genuine and well-founded concerns that the new protocol − which contains even fewer safeguards than the last − will cause our clients to experience the terror, pain, and suffering that comes from the act of poisoning called for in the protocol,” attorney Amy Harwell said in a letter to Lee in April.
Their concerns center around the use of pentobarbital, which Harwell said in the letter can cause executions to last as long as 20 minutes, where the inmate could remain aware and experience what she called “chemical waterboarding.”
State authorities argue that the execution method is constitutional and effective.
Contributing: Evan Mealin and Kelly Puente, The Nashville Tennessean
Fernando Cervantes Jr. is a trending news reporter for USA TODAY. Reach him at fernando.cervantes@gannett.com and follow him on X @fern_cerv_.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Tennessee executes Oscar Franklin Smith for 1989 triple murder
Judith Robirds Smith, Oscar Franklin Smith, Jason Burnett, Tennessean, Metro Nashville Police Department, Tennessee, court records, estranged wife
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