Sherell Tennessee Hanging The Legislator Highly Criticized

May 2024 · 3 minute read

Sherell’s comments about hanging people in Tennessee during a debate on adding the firing squad as a method of execution were widely criticized as invoking the state’s dark history of lynching and racial violence.

“Could I put an amendment on that that would include hanging on a tree, also?” representative Paul Sherrell said before calling the firing squad bill a “very good idea.”

Tennessee legislator Paul Sherrell has apologized for comments he made during a debate in the state’s House Criminal Justice Committee about adding the firing squad as a method of execution to Tennessee’s existing methods of lethal injection and electrocution. 

Sherrell suggested adding hanging people from trees to the list of potential execution methods, which critics interpreted as a call for state-sanctioned lynchings. 

The comments were particularly offensive due to Tennessee and the South’s long history of lynching violence against Black people, including in Sherrell’s hometown of Sparta, where a runaway enslaved person was once hanged in a local cemetery. 

The Equal Justice Initiative documented at least 236 lynchings in Tennessee between 1877 and 1950.

In a statement, Sherrell said his comments were intended to convey his belief that a just society requires the death penalty in kind for the cruelest and most heinous crimes. 

“My exaggerated comments were intended to convey my belief that for the cruelest and most heinous crimes, a just society requires the death penalty in kind.“Although a victim’s family cannot be restored when an execution is carried out, a lesser punishment undermines the value we place on protecting life.”

Mr. Sherrell said in a statement on Wednesday.

He added that he sincerely apologizes to anyone who may have been hurt or offended by his remarks. 

The history of the death penalty and racism in the United States, particularly in the South, has been widely documented, with lynchings often taking place with the implicit or explicit approval of law enforcement or in front of government buildings.

Even after lynchings waned, capital punishment fell disproportionately on Black people, especially those accused of killing white people.

According to The Independent, lynching and the death penalty share a long, racist history in the United States. Early backers of the death penalty suggest it might be a way to satiate racist mobs calling for violence in a more controlled manner. 

Black people in the United States have spent years facing the death penalty for certain crimes that would only earn white people stints in jail. 

Bryan Stevenson, the renowned capital defense attorney and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, has called the death penalty the “stepchild of lynching.” 

The Independent and the nonprofit Responsible Business Initiative for Justice have launched a joint campaign to end the death penalty in the United States. 

The RBIJ has attracted more than 150 well-known signatories to their Business Leaders Declaration Against the Death Penalty, including Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg and Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson.

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