Barbara Brown (T-G Photo by Clint Confehr) [Click to enlarge]

A federal judge on Friday ordered Tennessee to remove the killer of a Shelbyville woman from "death watch," meaning the condemned man's execution will not be conducted on Tuesday as scheduled by the state Supreme Court.

"I'm disappointed that the execution will not happen next week," Bedford County resident Barbara Brown said Friday night, approximately a day after she'd been advised by the state attorney general's victims advocate that U.S. District Court Judge R. Allan Edgar would probably put Gregory Thompson's execution on hold again.

Brown is the only direct blood relative available to witness Thompson's execution for his Jan. 1, 1985 stabbing of her sister, Brenda Blanton Lane.

Brenda Blanton Lane (Family photo) [Click to enlarge]

"I don't think it's going to give me satisfaction" to see Thompson die, Brown said. "Maybe closure."

Lane's body was run over with her car, driven by Thompson, near Manchester where she was left dead or dying as he and his girlfriend drove to Marietta, Ga., where they were captured.

On Jan. 5, Edgar told the defense team they had 30 days to add information to the case file that might persuade him that Thompson should not be executed.

Defense arguments have focused on Thompson's mental health, claiming that he's insane so it's wrong to kill him since he's incompetent to know why he'd be executed.

The fact that an execution is going to occur, and why, are all an inmate must know to be seen as competent for execution under state law, according to extensive arguments by the state.

Steve and Brenda Blanton Lane (Family photo) [Click to enlarge]

State-paid psychiatrists have testified that Thompson has bipolar disorder, which causes severe mood swings and delusions. Thompson needs regular doses of anti-psychotic drugs to prevent him from harming himself and others, the Associated Press has reported.

His lawyers say the drugs only make him "chemically competent" for execution.

Thirty days after Edgar's order was Saturday, but because that day fell on a weekend the deadline was at the close of business Monday. Thompson's execution date was Tuesday, and the state typically starts executions shortly after midnight.

Because of the time frame, Tennessee Department of Corrections was taking steps last week so it could follow the order from the state Supreme Court, according to Jennifer Smith, the associate deputy attorney general assigned to death penalty cases.

Edgar's order, filed at 11:14 a.m. EST Friday in Chattanooga, directed Riverbend Maximum Security Institution Warden Ricky Bell to remove Thompson from "death watch‚" because the judge did "not anticipate receiving the final submissions from (Thompson's lawyers) prior to Feb. 6 [and] the court will not lift the [hold] until it has ample opportunity to fully review all submissions made by the parties, which will occur sometime after Feb. 7."

The "Clarification Order" canceled TDOC's planned drawing, sometimes called a lottery, for the selection of news media representatives to witness the execution.

Brown asked about that as she discussed her family's right to witness Thompson's execution and about other aspects of the chain of events that started 21 years, one month and one week before he was to be executed Tuesday.

"Even though nothing will bring back Brenda, I had hoped that finally, after 21 years, we could put this part of it behind us," Brown said Friday.

Blanton was murdered nearly two years after working as a Times-Gazette reporter. She was a staff writer for United Methodist Communications in Nashville at the time of her death.

She was a Bedford County resident when Thompson and his girlfriend abducted her for her car at the Big Springs Shopping Center parking lot across the street from Shelbyville Police Department -- where her uncle, Jesse Blanton, was chief at the time.

A victims liaison officer with the state had told Brown that Feb. 7 "could still be a good date" for the execution "and that they were preparing to move him to death watch," Brown said.

As for Edgar's deadline of Monday evening -- 32 days after his order -- for filings from the defense, Brown said, "I don't think the judge knew the timing was so tight. His timing was not intentional on this.

"I was planning to be there" in the prison at Riverbend Monday night and Tuesday, she continued. "I had not made up my mind if I'd be a witness, but I was planning to be at the prison.

"It's not something that anybody would want" to witness, she said while asked if she believes seeing her sister's killer die would give her closure, or finality. "I don't know."

Brown had decided to leave her options open on what she would do, she said.

Witnessing an execution is limited to the "very immediate family," she said, repeating what she'd been told by the state. That is limited to siblings, parents, children, spouses and grandparents.

"I have no living grandparents. Steve (Lane), her husband, is dead. Mother is dead. Dad is in a nursing home with Alzheimer's.

"My son was going to witness it, but he doesn't qualify," she said of Carl Brown.

She's asked the victims liaison "to have that changed if (the execution) happens in the future," Brown said, later acknowledging that such change probably requires an act of the state legislature.

Brown's husband, Alvin, "always planned to witness, if he would be allowed, but he would not have been able to," she said.

Alvin Brown died late last year after an extended illness.

When Thompson was convicted by a Coffee County Circuit Court jury in Manchester, Tennessee's method of execution was the electric chair. It's now done by lethal injection.

"In relation to the electric chair, it seems pretty tame," Brown said.

A spokesman for the Tennessee Coalition to Abolish State Killing says the state outlawed euthanasia of dogs with one of the drugs used in the lethal injection for executions. And recently, the U.S. Supreme Court has taken up the issue on whether such a drug causes excruciating pain, the effects of which are masked by a serum administered just before the poison.