NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Attorneys for Tony Carruthers, a Tennessee death row inmate scheduled to be executed Thursday, said Wednesday they fear the state may proceed with expired lethal injection drugs — and that the Department of Correction has sidestepped their requests for a direct answer. The exchange mirrors a deepening nationwide debate over whether states can be trusted to carry out executions with transparent, constitutionally sound drug protocols.
Carruthers, 57, was sentenced to death after being found guilty of the 1994 kidnappings and murders of Marcellos Anderson, his mother Delois Anderson, and Frederick Tucker in Memphis. His execution, set for Thursday at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, would be Tennessee’s first since 2020.
In April, Carruthers’ legal team twice asked the Tennessee Department of Correction whether it had acquired the drugs needed for the lethal injection and whether those drugs had passed their expiration dates. The inquiries came as executions in several states have been halted or botched — sometimes after expired or improperly stored drugs were identified too late.
Assistant Attorney General John W. Ayers responded to the attorneys’ inquiries by stating that the department would adhere to its lethal injection protocol, which calls for regular inventory checks to monitor expiration dates. He did not, however, confirm that the drugs intended for Carruthers are unexpired. The response, the lawyers say, leaves a critical question unanswered hours before the scheduled execution.
“It’s the same pattern we’ve seen in Arkansas, Idaho, and elsewhere — states refuse to say whether the drugs are current, and then we find out after the fact that they were expired,” said one of Carruthers’ attorneys in a statement to The Associated Press. The attorneys did not release the exact exchange, but the AP reported the assistant attorney general’s reply.
The secrecy extends well beyond Tennessee. Across the United States, corrections departments have successfully lobbied legislatures to shield the identities of execution drug suppliers and the expiration dates of their stocks, often citing security concerns. Critics argue that the lack of transparency violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment because expired or degraded drugs may cause prolonged or severe pain.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that execution protocols must not create a substantial risk of serious harm. When expired drugs are used, courts have sometimes intervened. In Arkansas, for instance, the state acknowledged in 2017 that it had used an expired sedative during the execution of Kenneth Williams. In Idaho, officials confirmed in 2023 that a drug used in the execution of Gerald Pizzuto had sat on a shelf for years before being deployed.
In Tennessee, the Department of Correction has said little publicly about its drug supply. The state’s lethal injection protocol calls for a three-drug combination: a sedative, a paralytic, and a drug that stops the heart. The first drug, typically midazolam or pentobarbital, is the one most frequently challenged in court because of concerns about its efficacy and expiration.
Carruthers’ attorneys have also filed a separate lawsuit seeking a stay of execution on grounds that the state’s protocol fails to adequately screen for vein access — a challenge that underscores the overlapping medical and drug-quality questions that now accompany virtually every American execution. A hearing on that motion was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.
The Tennessee Supreme Court and Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, have the power to halt the execution, but neither has indicated any inclination to do so. Lee’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Capital punishment remains legal in 27 states, but the number of executions has declined steadily over the past two decades as drug manufacturers, many based in Europe, have refused to supply their products for lethal use. That has forced states to turn to untested compounding pharmacies, secondary suppliers, and — in some cases — drugs that have exceeded their labeled shelf life.
The Carruthers case has drawn national attention because it arrives at a moment when several states are experimenting with alternative execution methods, including firing squads and nitrogen gas, after struggling to obtain lethal injection drugs. In April, the U.S. Justice Department issued a rule explicitly authorizing federal executions by firing squad, and Alabama has scheduled what would be the nation’s first nitrogen hypoxia execution for June.
Meanwhile, Tennessee’s refusal to confirm or deny the expiration status of its drugs risks adding a new chapter to the state’s troubled execution history. In 2022, Tennessee called off the execution of Oscar Smith after discovering a “misunderstanding” about the administration of the lethal injection chemicals. That execution remains unscheduled.
The tension between government secrecy and the judiciary’s obligation to ensure humane executions has become a fixture of 21st-century capital punishment litigation. For Carruthers, the failure to answer a basic question — are the drugs expired? — may determine whether his execution proceeds as planned or becomes the latest in a growing list of cases where questions about drug integrity bring the machinery of death to a halt.