Death Row, Execution

Harold Wayne Nichols | The Murder of Karen Pulley

Harold Wayne Nichols was already a convicted rapist when he slipped into a young Chattanooga woman’s apartment in 1988, raped and strangled her in her own bed, and set himself on a path that would end on Tennessee’s death row under the shadow of an execution date he has so far escaped.

Harold Wayne Nichols | The Murder of Karen Pulley – Pic Credit Murderpedia

American Serial Rapist

Last updated: November 9, 2025

Harold Wayne Nichols | The Murder of Karen Pulley

  • Offender: Harold Wayne Nichols
  • AKA: “The Red-Headed Stranger” (nickname used in local/true-crime coverage of his late-1980s rape series in the Chattanooga area)
  • Victim: Karen Elise Pulley (21) – a young woman living with roommates in the Brainerd area of Chattanooga, Hamilton County, Tennessee
  • Location (crime): Pulley’s rented home in the Brainerd neighborhood of Chattanooga, Hamilton County, Tennessee, USA
  • Date of murder: Night of September 30, 1988 – Pulley was attacked and fatally injured that night; she was found the next morning and died later from blunt-force head trauma
  • Body discovered:
  • Morning after the attack (October 1, 1988) – a roommate found Pulley alive but unconscious on the bedroom floor in a pool of blood; she died later at the hospital
  • Arrest: January 1989 – identified as a suspect in a series of rapes in the East Ridge / Chattanooga area; while in custody on those unrelated charges, he confessed to the rape and murder of Karen Pulley
  • Primary conviction: First-degree felony murder of Karen Pulley, plus aggravated rape and first-degree burglary in the Pulley case
  • Sentence: Death sentence for Pulley’s murder, plus a 60-year sentence for aggravated rape and a 15-year sentence for first-degree burglary in the same incident; Nichols also received lengthy additional sentences for multiple aggravated rapes of other women in late 1988 and early 1989
  • Current status (as of late 2025): On death row in the Tennessee Department of Correction (Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, Nashville). His execution was originally set for August 4, 2020, but Governor Bill Lee granted a reprieve due to COVID-19–related concerns about clemency preparation and prison access. That reprieve expired at the end of 2020, and after a statewide pause in executions, the Tennessee Supreme Court has now reset Nichols’s execution date for December 11, 2025. Ongoing litigation centers on the state’s lethal-injection records and concerns about the execution protocol; Nichols must again select his method of execution (lethal injection or electrocution) under Tennessee law.

Classification & Characteristics

Harold Wayne Nichols is best classified as a predatory sexual offender whose violence escalated into a rape-murder, a man whose criminal identity is shaped less by a single outburst and more by a pattern of stalking, invading, and violating women. Before Karen Pulley’s murder, Nichols already had a record of serious sexual offenses. The state has long portrayed him not as a man who “snapped,” but as a practiced rapist whose crimes grew bolder and more brutal until one of his victims was left dead.

Criminologically, Nichols fits the mold of a serial sexual predator: he targeted women in their own spaces, used surprise and force, and left behind scenes of extreme violation. In that framework, Karen’s murder is less an isolated event and more the inevitable outcome of a pattern – one where rape is not the “worst-case scenario” but a stage on the way to homicide. Prosecutors leaned heavily on that pattern at trial, arguing that the only way to protect future women from Nichols was to permanently remove him from free society via a death sentence.

Psychologically, the public record on Nichols is more about his behavior than his inner landscape. Court documents and news coverage emphasize a history of prior sexual assaults, his ability to move through the world without attracting enough suspicion to stop him sooner, and the brutality of Karen Pulley’s final minutes. Unlike some killers who carefully craft an image of respectability, Nichols comes across as a man whose criminal side was scarcely hidden at all – someone whose repeated violations of women eventually gave the system enough to label him what he was: a sexually violent predator whose final escalation took a young woman’s life and landed him in a cell reserved for the “worst of the worst.”

Timeline of the Harold Wayne Nichols Case →

  • September 30–October 1, 1988 – Attack and Discovery
  • On the night of September 30, 1988, Harold Wayne Nichols breaks into the Brainerd-area Chattanooga home where 21-year-old Karen Pulley lives with roommates. He attacks her in her upstairs bedroom, violently rapes her, and strikes her in the head multiple times with a two-by-four. The next morning, a roommate finds Pulley alive but unconscious, lying in a pool of blood beside her bed. She dies the following day from blunt-force head injuries.
  • December 1988–January 1989 – Series of Aggravated Rapes
  • In the months after Pulley’s assault and death, Nichols continues to “roam the city at night,” targeting other women in the Chattanooga area. He commits a series of aggravated rapes in December 1988 and January 1989, often using weapons (a cord, a knife, a pistol) and leaving victims injured. These later become the prior violent felonies used as aggravating circumstances at his capital sentencing.
  • January 1989 – Arrest and Confession
  • Nichols is arrested in January 1989 on unrelated sexual-assault charges and held by East Ridge police. While in custody, a Chattanooga detective questions him about the Pulley murder. During that interview, Nichols gives a videotaped confession to the rape and killing of Karen Pulley—evidence later described by the courts as the only direct link between him and the Pulley crime.
  • 1990 – Trial and Death Sentence (Hamilton County)
  • A Hamilton County jury convicts Nichols of:
  • First-degree felony murder of Karen Pulley
  • Aggravated rape
  • First-degree burglary
  • He is sentenced to death for the murder, plus 60 years for aggravated rape and 15 years for burglary in the Pulley case, along with additional long sentences for his other aggravated-rape convictions.
  • May 2, 1994 – Direct Appeal Denied
  • The Tennessee Supreme Court affirms his conviction and death sentence in State v. Nichols, 877 S.W.2d 722 (Tenn. 1994), upholding the use of his prior aggravated-rape convictions as an aggravating circumstance and rejecting his challenges to the evidence and sentencing.
  • 2002 – State Post-Conviction Relief Denied
  • In Nichols v. State, 90 S.W.3d 576 (Tenn. 2002), the Tennessee Supreme Court denies state post-conviction relief, rejecting arguments centered on ineffective assistance of counsel, mitigation, and mental-health evidence. His death sentence remains in place.
  • 2004–2013 – Federal Habeas and Sixth Circuit Decision
  • Nichols seeks federal habeas corpus relief. The Eastern District of Tennessee denies his petition; in 2013, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals affirms in Nichols v. Heidle, 725 F.3d 516 (6th Cir. 2013), finding no basis to overturn his conviction or sentence. The U.S. Supreme Court later declines review.
  • 2018–2019 – Successive Post-Conviction Denied
  • He files additional post-conviction challenges in Tennessee courts. In an October 2019 opinion, the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals again denies relief; the Tennessee Supreme Court refuses further review, leaving Nichols’s death sentence intact and his judicial appeals essentially exhausted.
  • 2020 – Execution Date Set and Reprieve
  • The Tennessee Supreme Court sets Nichols’s execution for August 4, 2020, and the Department of Correction issues an execution advisory confirming the date. As it approaches, defense counsel and advocacy groups raise concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic and the fairness of clemency and legal proceedings under lockdown conditions. On July 17, 2020, Governor Bill Lee grants Nichols a reprieve through December 31, 2020, stopping the execution and explicitly citing the disruptions caused by COVID-19.
  • November 3, 2021 – New Execution Date: June 9, 2022
  • Once the reprieve expires and pandemic restrictions ease, the Tennessee Supreme Court resets Nichols’s execution. In a press release titled “Supreme Court Sets Two Execution Dates,” the court schedules him to die on June 9, 2022.
  • 2022 – System-Wide Pause on Executions
  • In April 2022, just hours before another prisoner’s execution, state officials discover that Tennessee has not been properly testing its lethal-injection drugs under its own protocol. Governor Lee halts that execution and orders an independent review of the entire system. Tennessee then pauses all executions for the rest of 2022, and Nichols’s June 9 date is swept into that broader moratorium.
  • 2023–2024 – New Protocol, Same Sentence
  • The independent review concludes that Tennessee repeatedly failed to follow its own lethal-injection rules. In response, the Department of Correction adopts a new protocol built around a single drug, pentobarbital, and rewrites portions of its execution manual. Through this period, Nichols remains on death row at Riverbend—his sentence unchanged, but no active execution date while the state repairs its system.
  • March 2025 – Date Reset: December 11, 2025
  • With its new protocol in place, Tennessee resumes scheduling executions. In early March 2025, the Tennessee Supreme Court sets new execution dates for four people on death row, including Harold Wayne Nichols, now slated for December 11, 2025. Media coverage describes this as part of Tennessee’s “return” to executions after the multi-year pause.
  • 2025 – Lawsuits Over How, Not Whether
  • After Tennessee executes other prisoners under the new pentobarbital protocol, concerns mount about pain, monitoring, and drug sourcing. Nichols’s attorneys file state and federal lawsuits seeking access to execution-protocol records, EKG data, testing information, and supplier details. They argue he cannot make an informed choice between lethal injection and the electric chair—a choice he must make under Tennessee law by November 11, 2025—if the state keeps key data secret.
  • Current Status – December 11, 2025 Execution Date
  • As of now, Nichols remains listed on the TDOC Death Row Offenders roster at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, under an active death warrant for December 11, 2025. The core legal battle is no longer about his guilt or death sentence—those have been upheld again and again—but about how Tennessee will carry out that sentence and what he has a right to know before the state takes his life.

→ Quick Answers

  • Who is Harold Wayne Nichols?
    A Tennessee death-row prisoner convicted of the rape and murder of a young Chattanooga woman, Karen Pulley, in 1988. He has a documented history of prior sexual assaults and was sentenced to death in Hamilton County in 1990.
  • Who was Karen Pulley?
    Karen Pulley was a young Chattanooga woman, newly married and active in her church community. In 1988, she was raped and strangled in her apartment, a killing that horrified her family, friends, and congregation.
  • What exactly did Nichols do?
    According to trial records, Nichols entered Karen’s apartment, raped her, and strangled her to death. She was found in her home, where she should have been safe. The state used the brutality of the attack, combined with his history of sexual offenses, as the basis for seeking the death penalty.
  • Did Nichols have prior convictions before the murder?
    Yes. Nichols had prior convictions for serious sexual offenses before being charged with Karen’s murder. Those priors were used as aggravating factors during the penalty phase of his capital trial.
  • Has he ever come close to execution?
    Yes. Tennessee scheduled his execution for August 4, 2020, but Governor Bill Lee granted a reprieve in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and concerns about carrying out executions during that period.
  • Where is he now?
    Nichols is currently on Tennessee’s death row at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, under an active execution date of December 11, 2025.

Case Summary

In the late 1980s, Chattanooga was grappling with its share of violent crime, but the murder of Karen Pulley cut through the noise. Karen was a young woman, newly married, active in her church. One day in 1988, she failed to answer calls. When concerned loved ones finally entered her apartment, they found a nightmare: she had been raped and strangled in her own bed.

Investigators quickly homed in on the brutality of the attack. The crime scene showed force, violation, and a level of violence that suggested a seasoned offender rather than a first-time criminal. The case was high-profile from the start, not only because of the senselessness of the killing but because it shattered the sense that home was a refuge.

It didn’t take long for the police to connect Harold Wayne Nichols to the murder. Already under suspicion in other sexual assaults, Nichols was arrested and interrogated. The more they dug, the worse he looked. He was accused of multiple rapes; physical and forensic evidence tied him to Karen’s apartment. In the eyes of Hamilton County prosecutors, Nichols wasn’t just another suspect – he was the predator who had been hunting women in and around Chattanooga and had finally escalated to murder.

At his capital trial, the state presented Nichols as exactly that: a serial sexual predator whose crimes had culminated in the rape and strangulation of Karen Pulley. Jurors saw the photographs. They heard about his prior assaults. They listened to the details of Karen’s last minutes. They needed very little time to decide that he should die for what he had done.

Decades later, Nichols remains on Tennessee’s death row, his name occasionally resurfacing when execution dates are scheduled, reprieves are granted, or the state’s death-penalty system comes under scrutiny. For Karen’s family and community, the case is frozen in a single moment: a young woman, in her own home, caught in the path of a man who had hurt women before and would hurt them again if he ever got the chance.

🕊️Victims of Harold Wayne Nichols

Karen Pulley

  • Age: Young adult 21 years old
  • From: Chattanooga, Hamilton County, Tennessee
  • Life & circumstances:
    Karen Pulley is often remembered in news and memorials as a faithful churchgoer, newly married, and close to her family and congregation. She was doing ordinary things – living in her apartment, going about her life – when Nichols turned her into the target of a sexual predator. Her murder is usually described as particularly shocking because it occurred in her own home, without any risky lifestyle choices or criminal overlap that might “explain away” the danger. She was, simply, where any of us expect to be safe.

→ FAQs

Did Nichols know Karen before the attack?

Public reporting typically describes the attack as a predator–victim encounter rather than a long-standing personal relationship. Nichols is framed as a serial sexual offender who targeted women he could overpower, including Karen, rather than someone involved in her daily life.

How did investigators connect him to the murder?

Investigators linked Nichols to Karen’s murder after he was pursued for other sexual offenses. Physical / forensic evidence and investigative work tied him to the crime scene; he also had a documented pattern of similar assaults that made him a prime suspect once police were looking in his direction.

Why did the jury choose the death penalty instead of life?

The jury heard not only about Karen’s murder but also about Nichols’ prior sexual assaults. Under Tennessee law, prior violent felonies, especially sexual ones, are aggravating factors that support a death sentence. The state argued that Nichols posed a continuing threat and that his pattern of predatory behavior justified the harshest penalty. The jury agreed.

What happened with his 2020 execution date?

Tennessee scheduled Nichols’ execution for August 4, 2020. As the COVID-19 pandemic continued, defense attorneys and advocates raised concerns about carrying out executions and conducting clemency/last-minute review under those conditions. Governor Bill Lee ultimately granted a reprieve, postponing Nichols’ execution.

Is there any claim that Nichols is innocent?

Nichols’ post-conviction litigation has focused more on issues like sentencing, prior offenses, and procedural / constitutional claims than on factual innocence. Unlike some modern death-row cases, his is not widely cited as an “innocence” claim but rather as a case raising questions about Tennessee’s death-penalty system, execution protocols, and the use of prior sexual offenses as aggravators.

Harold Wayne Nichols | The Murder of Karen Pulley

👉 The Story

A City, a Church, and a Shattered Safe Place

Chattanooga in the late 1980s was not immune to violent crime, but the murder of Karen Pulley cut deeper than most. Karen was the kind of victim communities instinctively rally around: young, newly married, in love with her church and her routines. She was not living on the margins; she was living the life many small-city southerners would recognize as their own.

When she stopped answering calls, it set off alarms. Loved ones went to check on her. The door opened onto a scene that would haunt them forever. Karen had been raped and strangled in the place that should have been safest: her own apartment.

News traveled fast – to family, to pews, to workplaces. A young woman of faith, killed in her bed by someone who did not belong there, felt like a betrayal not only of one family but of the entire community’s sense of security.

A Predator Emerges

Sex crimes rarely occur in isolation. As Chattanooga police dug into the Pulley case, they quickly began to see patterns that pointed beyond a single, horrific night.

Harold Wayne Nichols already had a history with law enforcement. He had been arrested for other sexual assaults. Reports of attacks on women in the area, combined with forensic evidence and investigative leads, started pulling investigators toward Nichols’ orbit. He fit the profile of the sort of man who breaks into women’s lives – literally and figuratively – and leaves them shattered.

When Nichols was eventually in custody, the pattern became clearer. This wasn’t a one-off attack by a man who “lost control.” This was part of a broader campaign of sexual violence. Karen Pulley, in that view, was not his only victim – she was just the one he killed.

Building a Capital Case

For Hamilton County prosecutors, the decision to seek the death penalty came down to two intertwined factors:

  1. The brutality and intimacy of Karen’s final moments – raped and strangled in her apartment.
  2. Nichols’ history of sexual violence – prior offenses that, under Tennessee law, could push a murder squarely into death-eligible territory.

At trial, the state laid out a narrative of a serial sexual predator whose depravity had finally culminated in homicide. Jurors saw photos, heard about prior rapes, and listened to the details of how Karen’s body had been found. If the point of capital punishment is to mark the “worst of the worst,” prosecutors argued, Nichols was clearly in that category.

The defense tried to humanize Nichols and push back on some aspects of the state’s story, but they were rowing against a current of outrage and horror. When deliberations ended, the jury returned with a death sentence.

Decades on Death Row

After sentencing, Nichols joined the ranks of Tennessee’s death-row prisoners at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. As the years rolled by, his case wound through the familiar series of direct appeals, state post-conviction petitions, and federal habeas challenges.

His lawyers raised issues like:

  • Whether his trial lawyers had effectively represented him during the punishment phase.
  • Whether the use of prior sexual offenses had unfairly tipped the scales against any mercy.
  • Whether mental-health or background evidence should have mattered more.

For Karen’s family, those filings were frustrating reminders that, decades after her death, the man convicted of killing her was still alive, filing petitions. For opponents of the death penalty, Nichols was one of many data points in a system they saw as expensive, slow, and uneven.

2020: A Date with the Death Chamber That Didn’t Happen

In 2020, after years of legal back-and-forth, Tennessee set Harold Nichols’ execution for August 4. For the first time, the state’s intention to actually carry out his sentence felt imminent. Execution dates have a way of forcing everyone—courts, governors, advocates, and families – into a tighter orbit.

Then came the pandemic.

COVID-19 raised serious questions about everything from prison conditions to whether clemency hearings and last-minute reviews could be done fairly while the world was locked down. Defense attorneys and advocacy groups argued that pushing ahead with executions under those circumstances would erode the integrity of the process.

Governor Bill Lee granted Nichols a reprieve, citing the pandemic and related concerns. The needle went back in its drawer, at least temporarily.

A Case in the Background of a Bigger Debate

Tennessee’s death-penalty system has been under increasing scrutiny in recent years. Problems with lethal-injection protocols, questions about wrongful convictions, and debates over the costs and benefits of capital punishment have all put pressure on the machinery of death.

Harold Wayne Nichols exists in that context less as a celebrity case and more as a representative one:

  • A man whose guilt is not widely contested.
  • A case where brutality and prior records make clemency a hard sell.
  • A death sentence that, decades later, has not yet been carried out.

For Karen Pulley’s loved ones, he is the man who took a daughter, a wife, a friend. For Tennessee’s death-penalty system, he is another name on a list that keeps moving but never quite reaches the end.

2021–2022: The Date Returns… and the System Stalls

When the reprieve expired at the end of 2020, nothing in Harold Nichols’ case had actually changed.
The conviction still stood.
The death sentence still stood.
The only thing that had shifted was the calendar.

In November 2021, the Tennessee Supreme Court stepped back in and did what high courts do when they want to put motion back into a stalled machine: it set a new date.

This time, the order named June 9, 2022 as the day Harold Wayne Nichols would be taken from his cell at Riverbend and walked into the execution chamber.

On paper, it looked like the state was finally ready to move again.
Executions that had been pushed aside during COVID were slotted back onto the docket.
News stories in late 2021 and early 2022 talked about two men – Oscar Franklin Smith and Harold Nichols- now back in line for the needle.

But behind the legal dates, something else was going wrong.

In April 2022, just hours before another prisoner, Oscar Smith, was to be executed, officials discovered that Tennessee’s lethal-injection drugs hadn’t been tested the way the protocol required. The mistake was serious enough that Governor Bill Lee abruptly stopped Smith’s execution and then did something no one on death row likes to see: he ordered an independent review of the entire system.

Within days, the governor announced that Tennessee would pause all executions through the end of 2022 while that review unfolded and “corrective action” was put in place.

For Harold Nichols, that meant the June 9, 2022 date turned into something else: a deadline that came close… and then dissolved into another long wait.

The death sentence didn’t go away.
The warrant didn’t become mercy.

But once again, the state stepped back from its own brink and left him where he has been for decades – alive, condemned, waiting.

2023–2024: Quiet on the Surface, Pressure Underneath

The independent review, led by former U.S. Attorney Ed Stanton, dug into years of execution practices and drug testing. By the end of 2022, the findings were blunt: for years, Tennessee had failed to properly test its lethal-injection chemicals according to its own rules.

While those reports circulated, Riverbend stayed quiet in one particular way –
no one walked out of a death-row cell and came back in a body bag.

But silence is not the same thing as safety.

Through 2023 and into 2024, attorneys for death row prisoners – including Nichols – kept working in the background:
challenging protocols,
watching for new policy drafts,
waiting for the moment when the state would say, “We’ve fixed it. We’re ready to start again.”

By late 2024, Tennessee had done exactly that.
The Department of Correction announced a new lethal-injection protocol built around a single drug, pentobarbital, instead of the old three-drug cocktail. It was presented as cleaner, simpler, more controlled – and as the key to resuming executions.

Everybody on death row knew what that meant:

The pause was ending.

The calendar would wake back up.

2025: New Drugs, New Dates, Old Sentence

In March 2025, after nearly three years without an execution, the Tennessee Supreme Court did what everyone had been expecting.

It issued a new batch of death warrants.

Four names went on that list:

  • Oscar Franklin Smith – May 22, 2025
  • Byron Lewis Black – August 5, 2025
  • Donald Ray Middlebrooks – September 24, 2025
  • Harold Wayne Nichols – December 11, 2025

For Nichols, it meant something that had hovered for decades became specific again:

A date.
A day of the week.
A point on the calendar where all his appeals, all his filings, all those years of waiting suddenly narrow to a single square on a December page.

Tennessee then proceeded to prove that its new protocol wasn’t theoretical.

On May 22, 2025, the state executed Oscar Franklin Smith by lethal injection using pentobarbital – the first execution Tennessee had carried out since 2020, and the first under the single-drug protocol.

On August 5, 2025, it executed Byron Black. Media and witnesses later described an execution that “went horribly wrong” – a man groaning, saying “It hurts so bad,” and EKG data showing his heart kept beating nearly two minutes after he was declared dead.

Those two executions didn’t just mark the return of the death penalty in Tennessee.
They became evidence – fresh fuel for lawsuits arguing that pentobarbital may not be as clean or painless as the state insists.

Nichols is one of the prisoners caught in the middle of that fight.

2025: A Date in December, and a Fight Over How

As his December 11, 2025 execution date approaches, Harold Nichols is not arguing about whether he’s on death row. That battle was lost long ago.

What he and his lawyers are arguing about now is how Tennessee plans to kill him – and what he has a right to know before he chooses.

Under Tennessee law, because Nichols’ crime and sentence predate 1999, he has the right to choose between lethal injection and the electric chair. If he doesn’t choose, lethal injection is the default. The law says he must make that choice by November 11, 2025.

But there’s a catch.

Nichols and his attorneys say the state has refused to hand over key records about how executions are actually being carried out under the new protocol:

  • Where the pentobarbital comes from
  • How it’s tested
  • What went wrong in prior executions
  • Internal EKG data and logs from men like Byron Black

They have filed lawsuits and public-records actions in state and federal court, arguing that he cannot make an informed choice between the chair and the needle when the state keeps the details of the needle in the dark.

News stories now describe “attorneys for a Tennessee death row inmate” suing over execution records,
“federal attorneys” demanding documents ahead of “a Chattanooga man’s death,”
and court filings that name Nichols and point directly to December 11 as the day the state intends to use its new drug on him.

At the same time, a separate lawsuit by a coalition of media outlets is attacking Tennessee’s execution secrecy from another angle, arguing that the state is hiding too much of the process from public view and that this violates First Amendment rights to witness what the government does in the people’s name.

For Harold, all of that legal noise funnels down into one grim reality:

  • The death sentence is still in place.
  • The warrant is live for December 11, 2025.
  • He must tell the state how he prefers to die by November 11, even as he argues that the information he needs to make that decision is being withheld.

Legal Status | Paper Trail | Harold Wayne Nichols

  • Harold Wayne Nichols has been on Tennessee’s death row for more than three decades, his case winding through every layer of the state and federal system.
  • He was convicted in 1990 in Hamilton County for the rape and first-degree felony murder of 21-year-old Karen Pulley in Chattanooga. On a September 1988 night, Nichols broke into the Brainerd-area house where Pulley lived with roommates, sexually assaulted her, and struck her in the head with a two-by-four, causing fatal injuries. A Hamilton County jury found him guilty and sentenced him to death.
  • On direct appeal, the Tennessee Supreme Court affirmed both his conviction and death sentence in State v. Nichols, 877 S.W.2d 722 (Tenn. 1994), rejecting challenges to the sufficiency of the evidence and to the aggravating factors the jury relied on.
  • Opinion:
  • https://law.justia.com/cases/tennessee/supreme-court/1994/877-s-w-2d-722-2.html
  • Nichols then pursued state post-conviction relief, arguing ineffective assistance of counsel and raising mental-health and sentencing issues. In 2002, the Tennessee Supreme Court again denied relief in Harold Wayne Nichols v. State of Tennessee, 90 S.W.3d 576 (Tenn. 2002), leaving the death sentence intact.
  • Opinion:
  • https://www.tncourts.gov/courts/supreme-court/opinions/2002/10/07/harold-wayne-nichols-v-state-tennessee
  • From there, the case moved into federal habeas. The Eastern District of Tennessee denied Nichols’s petition, and in 2013 the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed in Nichols v. Heidle, 725 F.3d 516 (6th Cir. 2013), summarizing his long procedural history and rejecting his constitutional claims. The U.S. Supreme Court later declined to hear the case.
  • Sixth Circuit opinion (PDF):
  • https://www.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/13a0193p-06.pdf
  • Nichols filed additional, successive post-conviction petitions back in state court, but those too were turned away. In 2019, the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals again refused relief, and the state supreme court denied further review, effectively closing off the remaining routine collateral avenues.
  • Tenn. Crim. App. opinion:
  • https://law.justia.com/cases/tennessee/court-of-criminal-appeals/2019/e2018-00626-cca-r3-pd.html
  • By 2020, nearly all of Nichols’s appeals had been exhausted. The Tennessee Supreme Court set an execution date of August 4, 2020, and the Department of Correction even issued an execution advisory confirming that date and his status as a Hamilton County death row prisoner (TDOC #146457).
  • Then came COVID-19. Defense lawyers and advocates argued that proceeding with executions during the pandemic would compromise everything from attorney access to clemency and last-minute review. On July 17, 2020, Governor Bill Lee issued a temporary reprieve for Nichols, halting the August 4 execution and extending relief through December 31, 2020, explicitly citing the “challenges and disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.”
  • ABA summary:
  • https://www.americanbar.org/groups/committees/death_penalty_representation/project_press/2020/fall-2020/tennessee-harold-wayne-nichols-granted-reprieve/
  • When that reprieve expired, nothing in the underlying case had changed. In a November 3, 2021 press release titled “Supreme Court Sets Two Execution Dates,” the Tennessee Supreme Court reset Nichols’s execution for June 9, 2022, alongside a separate date for Oscar Franklin Smith.
  • Press release:
  • https://www.tncourts.gov/press/2021/11/03/supreme-court-sets-two-execution-dates
  • But in 2022, Tennessee’s own execution machinery began to buckle. Hours before Oscar Smith’s execution, officials discovered lethal-injection drugs had not been properly tested under the state’s protocol, prompting Governor Lee to halt Smith’s execution and announce an independent review of every recent and pending execution. All executions—including Nichols’s June 9 date—were effectively paused while the state investigated and reworked its procedures.
  • That review concluded Tennessee had repeatedly failed to follow its own lethal-injection rules, and by late 2023–2024 the Department of Correction unveiled a revised protocol built around a single drug, pentobarbital, instead of the older three-drug cocktail. With the new protocol in place, the Tennessee Supreme Court began issuing new death warrants.
  • In March 2025, the court set a wave of new execution dates. One of those orders scheduled Harold Wayne Nichols to die on December 11, 2025, putting him behind Oscar Franklin Smith (May 22, 2025), Byron Black (August 5, 2025), and Donald Ray Middlebrooks (September 24, 2025) on the state’s calendar. The Tennessean and other outlets reported Nichols’s date as part of Tennessee’s “return” to active executions after the multi-year pause.
  • By mid-2025, Tennessee had carried out executions under the new pentobarbital protocol—for Smith and Black—drawing fresh scrutiny after witnesses described visible distress and troubling EKG data in at least one of those cases. Those executions became the backdrop for Nichols’s next legal front: how the state intends to kill him, and what he is entitled to know about that process.
  • Because Nichols’s crime predates 1999, Tennessee law gives him a choice between lethal injection and electrocution. Under current law and court orders, he must declare his method of execution by November 11, 2025—one month before his scheduled death.
  • His attorneys have responded by suing the state in both state and federal forums for access to execution records:
  • testing data on the drugs, internal EKG and monitoring reports from prior executions, contracts and sourcing information, and detailed protocol documents. They argue that without those records, Nichols cannot make a truly informed choice between the electric chair and the needle, and that Tennessee is violating public-records laws and his constitutional rights by keeping too much of the process in the dark.
  • Recent coverage – by outlets like The Tennessean, NewsChannel 5, WSMV, and national wire partners – has made the stakes plain:
  • Nichols is currently scheduled to be executed on December 11, 2025.
  • He must choose his method of execution by November 11, 2025, or default to lethal injection.
  • His lawyers are actively litigating for access to Tennessee’s revised lethal-injection records and protocols in the weeks leading up to that decision.
  • As of now, Harold Wayne Nichols remains listed on the Tennessee Department of Correction’s “Death Row Offenders” roster, housed at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, under an active death warrant for December 11, 2025.
  • TDOC roster:
  • https://www.tn.gov/correction/statistics/death-row-facts/death-row-offenders.html

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Related WickedWe Cases

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Beyond the Gavel

Roll Card — Harold Wayne Nichols (TN)

  • Name / TDOC: Harold Wayne Nichols – TDOC #146457
  • DOC Roster: Listed on Tennessee’s official “Death Row Offenders” page
  • https://www.tn.gov/correction/statistics/death-row-facts/death-row-offenders.html
  • Demographics: White male, born December 31, 1960.
  • Crime: Rape and first-degree felony murder of 21-year-old Karen Pulley in Chattanooga (Hamilton County), January 30, 1988.
  • Sentence: Death sentence imposed May 12, 1990, Hamilton County Criminal Court.
  • Custody: Housed on Tennessee’s death row at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.
  • Current Status: Active execution date set for December 11, 2025, with ongoing litigation over Tennessee’s revised lethal-injection protocol and access to execution records.

Docket Map | Proceedings (Condensed)

Stay / Warrant / Window

  • August 4, 2020 – First Active Warrant
  • Execution originally set for August 4, 2020. TDOC issues an execution advisory inviting media witnesses; Nichols seeks a stay; Governor Lee grants a reprieve through December 31, 2020.
  • June 9, 2022 – Reset Date
  • Tennessee Supreme Court resets his execution for June 9, 2022 in a November 3, 2021 order. That date is later affected by the state’s halt on executions while it reworks its protocols.
  • December 11, 2025 – Current Execution Date / Window
  • Nichols is now scheduled to be executed on December 11, 2025. Under Tennessee law, because his offense predates January 1, 1999, he may choose between lethal injection and electrocution, and must declare his choice by November 11, 2025. His attorneys are suing to obtain execution records to help him make that decision.

Case File Extras | What the Record Shows

Source Pack | Harold Wayne Nichols

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