Clay family murders

The Clay family murders occurred on March 28, 1988, when 29-year-old Angela Clay (1959 – March 28, 1988) and her two daughters, Latoya Clay (1979 – March 28, 1988) and Lakeisha Clay (March 8, 1982 – March 28, 1988; also spelt Lakesha Clay), aged nine and six, respectively, were murdered inside their house in Nashville, Tennessee. The perpetrator, Byron Lewis Black (born March 23, 1956), who was Angela's boyfriend, attacked the Clays while he was on work release for a prior incident in which he shot and wounded Angela's estranged husband.
Black was found guilty of all three counts of first-degree murder in March 1989 and was subsequently sentenced to death for murdering Lakeisha, while receiving two consecutive life sentences for the murders of Angela and Latoya. He appealed his conviction and sentence, and after exhausting his appeals, he sought to have his death sentence commuted on the grounds of intellectual disability, but these appeals were also denied.
Currently, Black remains on death row at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, with his execution date set for August 5, 2025, as ordered by the Tennessee Supreme Court.
On March 28, 1988, a mother and her two daughters were murdered at their house in Nashville, Tennessee.
Prior to the triple murder, the mother, 29-year-old Angela Clay, was separated from her husband Bennie Clay, who was also the father of their two daughters, nine-year-old Latoya Clay and six-year-old Lakeisha Clay. Angela had a relationship with another man named Byron Lewis Black, but in December 1986, Black was involved in a dispute with Bennie, and he later shot and wounded Bennie on the shoulder. As a result, Black was sentenced to two years' imprisonment with work release for a felony charge of shooting Bennie.
On March 28, 1988, while he was temporarily released due to his work release schedule, Black entered the home of Angela and her daughters, and shot and killed all three of them; both Angela and Latoya were being shot inside the master bedroom, with Angela being shot once in the head while Latoya sustaining gunshots on the neck and chest, while Lakeisha was being shot inside the second bedroom and sustained gunshot wounds in the chest and the pelvic area. Forensic examination showed that Lakeisha died from the gunshot wound to her chest after five to 30 minutes of being shot and had tried to defend herself before being shot from a distance of six to 12 inches. Latoya was purportedly shot at about 24 inches away from the skin surface and her death took three to ten minutes, while Angela died minutes after being shot in her sleep.
The police discovered the dead bodies after the family members made a report out of concern for the victims. The police eventually questioned Black as a suspect, and although there was lack of physical evidence on the crime scene to connect Black to the murders, the police were able to make a breakthrough and arrest Black, after they matched the bullets found on the Clays to the bullet recovered in the shooting case of Angela's husband, who was shot by Black in that case itself, coincidentally with the same gun that killed Angela and the girls.
After he was arrested, Byron Black was charged with three counts of first-degree murder. In December 1988, the prosecution formally announced that they would seek the death penalty for Black.
Despite his attempt to avoid trial on the grounds of mental incompetency, Black eventually stood trial on February 27, 1989, with jury selection commencing that same month. Black, who denied murdering the Clays, reportedly put up a defence of an alibi, and also claimed at one point that he was innocent and also found the dead bodies inside the house.
On March 8, 1989, a Davidson County jury found Black guilty of all three charges of first-degree murder. Bennie Clay, the father of the girls and Angela's husband, stated that the verdict was the best birthday present for his younger daughter Lakeisha, whose seventh birthday fell on the date of Black's guilty verdict, while Assistant District Attorney Eddie Barnard described the murders as the "most atrocious" triple murder that a jury ever came across. The sentencing trial of Black commenced the next day, with the prosecution continuing to pursue capital punishment for Black.
On March 10, 1989, for solely the charge of murdering Lakeisha Clay, Black was sentenced to death via electrocution by Judge Walter Kurtz upon the jury's unanimous recommendation for capital punishment. However, the jury deadlocked on imposing the death penalty for the murders of Angela and Latoya Clay. As a result, Judge Kurtz also handed Black two consecutive life sentences for these other two killings, in addition to 15 years for burglary.
Black's case marked the fifth case in six months where Davidson County prosecutors sought the death penalty.
On August 5, 1991, the Tennessee Supreme Court rejected Byron Black's appeal against his death sentence and murder conviction. In a majority decision of 3 to 2, the court dismissed the appeal and upheld that electrocution was not a cruel and unusual punishment, and in the majority judgement, the three judges felt that the "brutal and senseless" triple murder of Angela Clay and her daughters placed Black as one of the defendants who deserved the death penalty and it was not a disproportionate punishment compared to sentences imposed in precedent cases, although the two dissenting judges did not believe that the aggravating circumstances warranting Black's death sentence were sufficiently proven by the prosecution.
On September 27, 1995, the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals rejected Black's appeal.
On April 8, 1999, Black's second appeal to the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals was also dismissed.
On October 19, 2005, Black appealed to the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals and cited that he had intellectual disabilities that would have exempted him from the death penalty. The appeal, however, was rejected.
In 2008, a federal district court rejected Black's federal appeal. On December 15, 2011, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals remanded Black's case to the lower federal courts for another appeal hearing.
On January 22, 2013, Black's appeal was rejected by Judge Todd J. Campbell of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee.
On August 10, 2017, Black's second appeal to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was dismissed.
On June 4, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Black's appeal. This was the final appeal Black had left in his case, and his death sentence was thus confirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
In early 2022, Black appealed once again to vacate his death sentence on the grounds of intellectual disability, in light of an April 2021 law that enabled the state's death row inmates to avoid the death penalty based on intellectual disabilities under a new criteria. Unusually, Davidson County District Attorney Glenn Funk agreed with the defence lawyers of Black that he was intellectually disabled and he should not be executed. On March 29, 2022, Senior Judge Walter Kurtz rejected Black's appeal and found that he was not intellectually disabled and he was eligible to face capital punishment for the 1988 Clay family murders.
Black subsequently appealed to the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals against Senior Judge Kurtz's ruling. Like in the previous appeal, District Attorney Funk agreed that Black was intellectually disabled and his death sentence should be commuted to life imprisonment. However, the prosecutors representing the Tennessee Attorney General's office argued against commuting Black's death sentence, and argued that Black's case did not fit the criteria for eligibility and also stated that Black was legally barred from seeking a third adjudication of his intellectual disability claims, the latter argument which the judges questioned in return. On June 6, 2023, the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals once again upheld the death sentence of Black.
On September 24, 2019, the Tennessee Attorney-General Herbert Slatery petitioned to the Tennessee Supreme Court to schedule the execution dates of nine prisoners on Tennessee's death row, and Byron Black was one of the nine prisoners which the state sought to execute.
On February 24, 2020, the Tennessee Supreme Court signed the death warrants of both Black and Pervis Tyrone Payne, scheduling them to be executed on October 8, 2020, and December 3, 2020, respectively. Black's lawyers argued against executing Black, citing his low IQ and both brain damage and schizophrenia, and added that Black had previously received treatment for a multitude of health conditions he experienced while on death row, including two hip replacements. The execution dates of both Payne and Black were issued four days after the state executed Nicholas Todd Sutton via the electric chair. Apart from Payne and Black, two other condemned inmates, Harold Wayne Nichols and Oscar Franklin Smith, also received execution dates of August 4, 2020, and February 4, 2021, respectively.
In April 2020, Black's lawyers sought a postponement of the execution, citing the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in the United States and the need for more time to further pursue Black's intellecual disability claims in court. On June 12, 2020, the Tennessee Supreme Court issued a temporary reprieve for Black, postponing his execution to April 8, 2021, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, which affected the American courts' schedules and hindered the courts from conducting a hearing to assess Black's intellectual disability claims. The other inmates similarly had their execution dates staved off due to the pandemic, and one of them, Payne, had his death sentence commuted to life imprisonment on the grounds of intellectual disability in January 2022.
While Black was still awaiting his execution, the surviving family members of Angela, Latoya and Lakeisha Clay accepted an interview in October 2020. Linette Bell, the sister of Angela, stated that she found it fair and just for Black to be sentenced to death for murdering her sister and her nieces, and she felt that it was time for Black to be executed to fulfill the ends of justice. Bell added that her sister was a "good girl" and the victims did not deserve such brutal deaths. Bell also rejected the fact that Black was intellectually disabled, pointing out that he was mentally competent enough to commit such callous murders. Retired police officer Bill Pridemore, who was one of the officers responding to the scene and found the bodies of the Clays, stated that the scene itself demonstrated the brutality of the crime, and he agreed with the death penalty for Black.
On December 3, 2020, the Tennessee Supreme Court granted an indefinite stay of execution for Black, as a result of the multiple issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and also to grant more time for Black to pursue further appeals against his death sentence on the grounds of intellectual disability.
On March 3, 2022, the Tennessee Supreme Court issued three death warrants for Black and two more convicted murderers on death row. Black's execution was re-scheduled to take place on August 18, 2022, while the other two, Gary Wayne Sutton and Donald Ray Middlebrooks, were given execution dates of October 6, 2022, and December 8, 2022, respectively.
In April 2022, hours before the execution of Oscar Smith, the Tennessee Governor Bill Lee put a halt to the execution, and in May 2022, Lee further ordered a moratorium on all pending executions (including Black's) while the state conduct a review of its lethal injection protocols, after it was found that the state had failed to ensure its lethal injection drugs were properly tested.
By end 2024, the Tennessee Department of Correction had developed a new lethal injection protocol, by which the prison officials would carry out lethal injection executions with doses of a single drug pentobarbital, which paved way to the possibility of resuming executions in Tennessee after the state last executed Nicholas Todd Sutton in 2020.
On March 3, 2025, the Tennessee Supreme Court issued a court order, scheduling the execution dates of four convicted murderers on the state's death row, and the list included Byron Black. Black was the second in line out of the four, with his execution date set as August 5, 2025. The other three were Oscar Franklin Smith (May 22, 2025), Donald Ray Middlebrooks (September 24, 2025) and Harold Wayne Nichols (December 11, 2025). Under Tennessee state law, Black and the other three prisoners were allowed to choose between lethal injection or the electric chair for their upcoming executions, because they were all sentenced to death before 1999.
As of 2025, Byron Lewis Black remains incarcerated on death row at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution.