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Two TN death row executions scheduled for 2020

Nicholas "Nicky" Todd Sutton will be the first execution of 2020, scheduled for Feb. 20.

With Lee Hall Jr.'s execution on Dec. 5 being the last of 2019 for Tennessee, two more death row inmates are scheduled to die in 2020.

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Nicholas "Nicky" Todd Sutton will be the first execution of 2020, scheduled for Feb. 20.

Nicholas Sutton Sutton was sentenced to die in the 1985 stabbing death of a fellow inmate at the Morgan County Regional Correctional Facility. He and another man stabbed inmate Carl Estep 38 times. Witnesses said Estep, who was imprisoned for child molestation, had sold the two inmates bad drugs.

He was convicted of his grandmother's murder in Morristown, and later the murder of a fellow inmate while serving time in Morgan County.

Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman, formerly known as James Lee Jones, is set to die on April 9, 2020.

James Jones Jones, also known as Abu-Ali Abdur'Rahman, was convicted for his part in a 1986 raid on a drug dealer's house in Nashville. He stormed inside with his friend DeValle Miller. The residents were bound with duct tape. Patrick Daniels lay dead afterward with multiple stab wounds. His girlfriend, Norma Jean Norman, survived, even though one of her attackers left a butcher knife in her back. Her two young daughters had huddled in a back bedroom until the attack was over.

He is convicted of the murder of Patrick Daniels in 1986 in Davidson County.

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A report from the Death Penalty Information Center said 2019 was the fifth straight year with fewer than 30 executions and 50 new death sentences.

Death row populations were dropping in most of the 29 states that still have the death penalty.

The report showed the Supreme Court granted less death-row inmates last-minute reprieves.

Only seven states carried out executions this year.