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MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A man convicted of double murder in Shelby County and sentenced to death will no longer face capital punishment. Michael Sample’s death sentence has been vacated. Sample and Larry McKay were both convicted in 1983 for double murder in 1981 at the L&G convenience store on North Watkins Street. Years after the […]

MEMPHIS, Tenn. – Pervis Payne’s death penalty sentence was officially vacated by a judge Tuesday morning. District Attorney Amy Weirich’s office said the death sentence would be converted to life terms. This comes after the district attorney’s office found he is intellectually disabled, therefore, taking him off death row. Payne, who has been imprisoned on […]

MEMPHIS, Tenn.– A judge heard testimony from witnesses about former death row inmate Pervis Payne’s character during his resentencing hearing on Monday. Payne was once facing death row but he was recently taken off after it was deemed he was intellectually disabled. He was convicted of murdering a Millington woman and her 2-year-old daughter more […]

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Shelby County District Attorney Amy Weirich said Thursday her office is dropping the request for a new hearing on the intellectual disability of death row inmate Pervis Payne. That means the sentence will be converted to two consecutive life sentences, Weirich said. Payne had been sentenced to death in the 1987 fatal […]

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — There’s a big decision to be made after somber moments in Judge Paula Skahan’s courtroom on Tuesday. “This has been in the court system a long, long time and it’s down to me as to whether Mr. Payne will be eligible for parole in six years or whether he will serve the […]

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Former death row inmate Pervis Payne could be eligible to go before the parole board and be freed in five years, his attorney said after a hearing in a Memphis court on Monday. Payne’s death sentence in a 1987 murder case was vacated in November after he was determined to be intellectually […]

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Inmate Pervis Payne was back in a Memphis criminal courtroom Friday after his lawyers filed a motion to have the Shelby County District Attorney’s Office removed from their client’s case. The request was made due to what Payne’s attorneys call a “conflict of interest” by one of the DA’s prosecutors, specifically naming […]

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The fight to free Memphian Pervis Payne from death row is getting the support of the national Southern Christian Leadership Conference.  Dr. Charles Steele, the president and CEO of the SCLC, was at the National Civil Rights Museum on Thursday. He’s in Memphis this week to voice his support of the movement […]

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A Memphis judge has denied the motion to remove the Shelby County District Attorney’s Office from the case of death-row inmate Pervis Payne. Payne’s lawyers filed the motion to have the DA’s office removed from the case earlier this month. Payne’s lawyers argued there was a conflict of interest by one of […]

Attorneys for inmate Pervis Payne have filed a petition asking for the chance to present their client’s intellectual disability claim in court.

Tennessee lawmakers have passed legislation designed to prevent death row inmates with an intellectual disability from being executed.