At 1am central time, Phillip Workman was executed for the murder of Lieutenant Ronald Oliver. Of note, Workman was the first capital defendant to be executed since the state of Tennessee's revised its lethal injection protocol so as to ensure the process does not cause unnecessary pain and suffering during execution.

The NYT reports:

Philip R. Workman's execution date has come and gone five times in the quarter-century since his conviction for shooting a Memphis police officer. Early Wednesday, he was finally executed at the Riverbend prison on the industrial outskirts of this city.

The execution, the first since the state reviewed and revised its lethal injection procedures, came after a flurry of appeals from Mr. Workman's attorneys, who unsuccessfully sought stays from the U.S. Supreme Court and the Tennessee Supreme Court. . . .

Mr. Workman's case has received attention in part because it came so soon after the state's review of lethal injection procedures. Tennessee is among a small group of states that have scrutinized lethal injection, . . .

UPDATE: Sentencing Law & Policy rounds up some related posts here.