Tennessee officials halted the scheduled execution of Tony Carruthers on Thursday after executioners spent more than an hour unable to find a vein for a backup intravenous line, a required step under the state’s lethal injection protocol. Gov. Bill Lee announced soon afterward that the state would not attempt to execute Carruthers again for at least a year.
Carruthers was convicted in 1994 of kidnapping and murdering three people in Memphis. His execution date had been set for Thursday at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.
The Tennessee Department of Corrections said in a written statement that medical personnel quickly established a primary IV line but were unable to locate a suitable vein for a backup line, as the execution protocol requires. Efforts to insert a central line — a catheter placed into a large vein — also failed, and officials then called off the execution.
Maria DeLiberato, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union representing Carruthers, was present for the attempt. She said she saw him “wincing and groaning” while the insertion team worked, describing the scene as “horrible” to watch.
An Associated Press journalist was also in attendance, although a Tennessee Department of Correction rule contested by news organizations prohibits media witnesses from observing the insertion of IVs. The ACLU and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press have challenged the restriction in court, arguing it undermines the public’s ability to monitor executions.
Lee’s one-year reprieve means the state will not seek a new execution date for Carruthers before at least May 2027. His lawyers had previously challenged the execution on separate grounds, arguing that Tennessee’s supply of lethal injection drugs might be expired; a federal judge declined to block the execution over that concern.
The aborted procedure is the latest in a series of failed or problematic lethal injections across the country. In Idaho last year, officials halted the execution of Thomas Creech after an hour of unsuccessful IV attempts. Alabama in 2024 executed Kenneth Eugene Smith using nitrogen gas after difficulties with its lethal injection process. States have increasingly struggled to obtain reliable supplies of execution drugs, and medical professionals have raised ethical objections to their participation in the process.