Execution Byron Black Tennessee Death Row.

State attorneys in Tennessee say a judge’s order to take a death row inmate to the hospital on the morning of his execution to deactivate his heart-regulating device would cause “chaos.” That argument and others came in the state’s appeal Wednesday regarding the implanted device inside Byron Black. State attorneys say protestors would pose a risk on the hospital trip. Black’s attorney says the state presented no evidence of that. Black’s lethal injection is set for Aug. 5. His attorneys say his heart device would continuously shock him during the execution. The state disputes that.

A judge is ordering state officials to turn off a death-row inmate’s heart-regulating implanted device to avert the risk that it might try to shock him during his execution by lethal injection scheduled for Aug. 5. Nashville Chancellor Russell Perkins issued the order Friday. Byron Black is slated to die by a single dose lethal injection of pentobarbital. Black’s attorneys have said that the implantable cardioverter-defibrillator could shock him in an attempt to restore his heart’s normal rhythm, causing extreme pain and suffering. Attorneys for the state deemed it highly unlikely that the pentobarbital would trigger the device’s defibrillating function. And if it did, they say he would be unconscious and unaware, and unable to perceive pain.

Attorneys for a Tennessee death row inmate have launched a last-ditch effort to prevent his Aug. 5 execution. In Nashville’s Chancery Court, they are asking a judge to require the deactivation of an implanted defibrillation device in the moments before Byron Black’s execution. Such an order could potentially delay the execution until the state finds someone willing to do the deactivation. Meanwhile, at the state Supreme Court level, they want judges to order a lower court to consider their claim that Black is incompetent to be executed. The attorneys also have filed a general challenge to the state’s new execution protocol, but that case won’t be decided before the execution date.