There have been two recent, noteworthy Tennessee Supreme Court decisions.
First, the Court issued a ruling in August that upheld a statute allowing the State to collect a fee for lab testing from defendants convicted of certain drug and alcohol related offenses. This decision reversed a Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals decision, which found the lab tests to be unconstitutionally biased based on the monetary incentive for a positive test result.
More recently, the Tennessee Supreme Court upheld the State’s three-drug lethal injection method of administering the death penalty. The Court found that the death row inmates challenging the three-drug method failed to establish that the method violated both the Tennessee & U.S. constitutions’ prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment. Opponents of the method have said they will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the decision.