The Tennessee Supreme Court postponed execution dates for four inmates, effectively halting all executions while the courts decide whether current protocols for putting people to death are constitutional. Tennessee last executed a prisoner in 2009. Since then, legal challenges and problems obtaining lethal injection drugs have stalled new executions. In 2013 and 2014, the state tried to jump-start the process with a new one-drug lethal injection method and the reinstatement of the electric chair as a backup. The Tennessee Supreme Court has vacated the execution dates of the last four men on the state's death row as new lethal injection methods are challenged. Above, electrocution has been designated as a backup method . Beginning in December 2013, the court set new execution dates for 11 inmates. One inmate died in prison, and the execution dates for the others have been postponed as they approach because of legal challenges to the new methods. On Friday, the court postponed the last of the scheduled execution dates. It will set new dates after the legal questions are settled. States across the country have been struggling to find a method of execution that will stand up to legal challenges. And obtaining lethal injection drugs has been getting harder. As manufacturers have refused to sell drugs to prisons for executions, prison officials across the US have turned to compounding pharmacies, which make drugs specifically for individual clients. But those versions have also become difficult to come by because pharmacists are reluctant to expose themselves to possible harassment. Last month, the American Pharmacists Association adopted a policy discouraging its members from providing drugs for lethal injections, saying that runs contrary to the role of pharmacists as health care providers. Death row inmates challenging Tennessee's lethal injection method recently submitted an affidavit from University of Utah College of Pharmacy professor James H. Ruble that questions whether even a willing compounding pharmacist could provide the pentobarbital that Tennessee and several other states need for executions. Leroy Hall Jr, 48 (left) and Nicholas Todd Sutton, 53 (right) were both convicted of murder in 1991 and 1985, respectively. They no longer have dates for execution in Tennessee . Donald Strouth, 56 (left) and Abu-Ali Abdur'Rahman, 64 (right) were also both convicted of murder, though the European Union has called for Abdur'Rahman, who is believed to be mentally ill, to be allowed to live . Ruble says in the affidavit that the main ingredient for pentobarbital is unavailable from the six primary commercial sources that compounding pharmacists buy their ingredients from. The Tennessee Supreme Court's recent ruling will vacate the execution dates for Leroy Hall Jr, 48, Donald Wayne Strouth, 56, Nicholas Todd Sutton, 53, and Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman, 64. Hall was convicted of premeditated murder and aggravated arson after burning his ex-girlfriend to death in 1991. Strouth was convicted of murdering a clothing store owner in 1978 by slitting his throat after he was knocked unconscious with a rock. Sutton was sentenced to death for stabbing a fellow inmate to death in 1985 after originally being sent to prison for child molestation. Abdur'Rahman, formerly James Lee Jones,  received his death penalty sentence for the murder of a Nashville cocaine dealer in 1986 while he was a remember of a militant Christian group looking to eliminate drugs from its neighborhood. The case of Abdur'Rahman, who was reportedly seriously abused by his parents as a child, has drawn international attention and the European Union called for a stay. He is believed to be mentally ill and had ineffective counsel during his trial, according to his website. There are 69 people on Tennessee's death row. The Tennessee Supreme Court (pictured) is waiting for verdicts about the constitutionality of the lethal injection drug pentobarbital . Tennessee last year reinstated electrocution as an alternative if lethal injection drugs are unavailable or a court rules the procedure unconstitutional. But that change has brought yet another legal challenge. Other states of the 31 with the death penalty are considering their own alternatives. Utah last month reinstated the firing squad as a backup method if it can't obtain lethal injection drugs. In Oklahoma, lawmakers approved nitrogen gas as a backup execution method. The state's Republican Governor Mary Fallin supports the death penalty but has not said whether she will sign the bill. Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf suspended his state's death penalty in February, citing the inefficiency of long court proceedings and expense. Ohio and Georgia are delaying all of their executions while investigation their lethal injection drug protocols. The US Supreme Court will hear a case later this month about the first substance in a so-called 'three drug cocktail', which is supposed to render the person being executed unconscious so they will not feel pain for the second two drugs. Scrutiny on the death penalty has increased since an execution using the drug, midazolam, resulted in an Oklahoma inmate writhing in presumed pain before dying 43 minutes after the procedure began. Tennessee uses only one drug in its protocol, the sedative pentobarbital. There are 69 people in death row in the state, according to the Department of Corrections. The Tennessee Supreme Court order said that their execution dates have previously been vacated for legal challenges.
Tennessee Supreme Court vacates execution dates for four men .
Leroy Hall Jr, 48, Donald Wayne Strouth, 56, Nicholas Todd Sutton, 53, and Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman, 64, all faced upcoming death .
New executions stalled as states' new lethal injection methods scrutinized .