Tennessee Is About to Execute Byron Black — Despite His Intellectual Disability

On the Sunday before Byron Black was moved from his death row cell to the isolation pod where he would await execution, Carolyn Weaver entered Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, where she regularly visits a different man on death row. Weekend visitation usually takes place in a room limited to four families at a time, and she was used to seeing Black’s younger sister Freda. But that morning, the guards said, “We’re going to do it a little different today.” More of Black’s relatives were coming, and they would have their own room. It was one of the family’s last opportunities to visit Black. He was scheduled to die two weeks later, on August 5.