State Supreme Court grants execution delay

The Tennessee Supreme Court has granted a temporary stay for death row inmate Stephen Michael West.
The court issued the order on Saturday. It grants West a postponement through Nov. 30. He was scheduled to be executed Tuesday evening in Nashville for the 1986 stabbing deaths of Wanda Romines and her 15-year-old daughter Sheila Romines in Union County.
The court made the decision so that the Davidson County Chancery Court can hear evidence in a lawsuit West’s attorneys filed alleging that prisoners executed by lethal injection experience unconstitutionally severe pain.
The lawsuit claims the first drug in Tennessee’s three-drug lethal injection protocol does not adequately anesthetize prisoners.