Over 37 years ago in a “fit of jealous rage,” Byron Black took the lives of his then-girlfriend Angela Clay, 29, and her two daughters, Latoya Clay, 9, and Lakeisha Clay, 6, fatally shooting them. He was on work release while serving time for shooting Clay’s estranged husband at the time of the killings.
After his execution began in a Tennessee prison, the convicted murderer told his “spiritual advisor” that “It’s hurting so bad” just before he died. He officially died by lethal injection at 10:43 a.m. on August 5, 2025.
His attorney argued that his heart-regulating device (an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator or ICD) needed to be deactivated before getting the injection to prevent a “torturous death.” They alleged that when the lethal chemicals took effect it could shock his heart, prolonging the execution and causing “unnecessary pain,” the New York Post reported. But a week before his scheduled death, a judge ruled the state was not obligated to deactivate it.
Over his sentences, his attorneys attempted to get a new hearing to argue that Black was “intellectually disabled” and therefore ineligible for the death penalty by US Supreme Court precedent.
“The fact that he was able to raise his head several times and express pain tells you that the pentobarbital was not acting the way that state’s experts claim it acts,” attorney Kelley Henry said in a statement, according to the New York Post. She also divulged that Black was suffering from multiple conditions, including congestive heart failure, brain damage, kidney failure, dementia, and that he used a wheelchair.
“Today, the state of Tennessee killed a gentle, kind, fragile, intellectually disabled man in a violation of the laws of our country simply because they could,” she continued.
Her statement elicited little sympathy from the victim’s family, some of whom were present at the prison on the day of his death.
“His family is now going through the same thing we went through 37 years ago,” Clay’s sister, Linette Bell, shared in a statement following his death, the Post reported. “I can’t say I’m sorry because we never got an apology.”
In 2025, 28 people have been executed in the US, Black being the latest, per the Post.
