In Tennessee, lawyers for death row prisoner Billy Ray Irick are appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court to stay his scheduled execution Thursday. Irick was convicted in 1986 of the rape and murder of a 7-year-old girl in Knox County, Tennessee. He is one of 33 death row prisoners who are challenging Tennessee’s plan to use a controversial three-drug cocktail for executions, which includes the sedative midazolam, which has been used in multiple painful, botched executions in the past. The prisoners say the drug cocktail amounts to being tortured to death.
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