NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - The Tennessee Senate has voted to allow the state to electrocute death row inmates if lethal injection drugs cannot be obtained.
The measure sponsored by Sen. Ken Yager passed on a 23-3 vote on Wednesday. The Harriman Republican says current law allows the state to use its alternate execution method only when lethal injection drugs are not legally available. But Yager says there was no provision for what do if there was a shortage of those drugs.
Tennessee this year had 10 prisoners with scheduled executions, but has not put an inmate to death since 2009.
The state’s lethal injection protocol uses a sedative commonly used to euthanize animals, but states are exhausting supplies. The state’s last electrocution was in 2007.
The companion bill is awaiting a House floor vote.
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LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - Authorities carried on their search Wednesday for two men reported missing in the Mississippi River a day earlier after a barge carrying tons of steel coil flipped and sank while moored at a terminal in northeast Arkansas.
The two fell into the water Tuesday afternoon while the barge was being unloaded at a terminal east of Blytheville, about 60 miles north of Memphis, Tenn., said Bill Colclough, a U.S. Coast Guard spokesman in New Orleans. He said the barge lifted to its starboard side and sank - but why it did so wasn’t known.
The vessel, moored at the Kinder Morgan dock near Hickman, was carrying about 700,000 pounds of steel coil.
“Right now, we’re treating it as an active search and rescue case,” said Ryan Tippets, another U.S. Coast Guard spokesman in New Orleans. “It’s our job regardless to search no matter what. There’s not any indicators either way if they’re alive or dead. But we’re treating it as a search and rescue case.”
Houston-based Kinder Morgan said it did not own the barge. A spokeswoman for the company, Sara Loeffelholz, said the two men worked for Kinder Morgan through a staffing agency. Their names were not being released.
The barge was fully submerged along the river’s tree-lined banks. The river was running swiftly and just below flood stage Wednesday just south of where Arkansas, Missouri and Tennessee meet.
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LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - Authorities resumed a search Wednesday for two men reported missing in the Mississippi River after a barge carrying tons of steel coil flipped and sank while moored at a terminal in northeast Arkansas.
“At this point, it’s still a search-and-rescue mission,” Brandon Morris, a spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management, said Wednesday morning. “It has not turned into a recovery mission.”
U.S. Coast Guard spokesman Bill Colclough said the two fell into the water Tuesday afternoon while the barge was being unloaded at a terminal east of Blytheville, about 60 miles north of Memphis, Tenn. The vessel, moored at the Kinder Morgan dock near Hickman, was carrying about 700,000 pounds of steel coil.
Houston-based Kinder Morgan said it did not own the barge. Spokesman Richard Wheatley declined to release the names of the two missing people and who owned the barge. It was not immediately clear who employed the missing men.
Colclough, speaking from New Orleans, said the barge lifted to its starboard side and sank - but why it did so wasn’t known.
The barge was fully submerged along the river’s tree-lined banks. The river was running swiftly and just below flood stage Wednesday just south of where Arkansas, Missouri and Tennessee meet.
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KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - The second season of vintage-era baseball in Tennessee is opening this weekend with a double-header in Knoxville.
A statement from the Tennessee Association of Vintage Base Ball says players will observe the rules and customs that the game had in the 1860s, including playing barehanded.
The Knoxville News Sentinel (https://bit.ly/1gL5T97) reports the event will mark the first vintage-style baseball games in the area in decades.
During a recent scrimmage game, players used 19th century uniforms, wooden bats and balls covered and stitched from one piece of leather. Rules included pitchers throwing underhanded, no balls or strikes being called and fielders being able to catch the ball after one bounce for an out. The sport was also known as base ball, with two words, instead of baseball.
“It’s like re-enacting but without knowing the outcome,” joked Adam Alfrey, the captain of the Knoxville Holstons, which will take on the Dry Town Boys of Roane County in the double-header.
Alfrey, a curator at the East Tennessee History Center, said he helped get the local teams organized after hearing about a couple of teams had been formed in the Nashville area last year.
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