Tennessee prison officials halted the scheduled execution of death row inmate Tony Carruthers on Thursday after medical personnel spent more than an hour attempting to establish the intravenous lines required by the state’s lethal injection protocol, officials said. Shortly after the procedure was called off, Gov. Bill Lee announced the state would not attempt another execution for at least a year.
The Tennessee Department of Corrections said in a written statement that medical staff had quickly placed a primary IV line but could not find a suitable vein for a backup line, which the protocol mandates. Efforts to insert a central line also failed, the department said.
Maria DeLiberato, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who represents Carruthers, said she was present in the execution chamber and watched the attempts to place the lines. She said medical personnel tried veins in Carruthers’ right arm, left arm, left hand, and left foot before turning to a central line.
At one point, Carruthers groaned as a doctor pushed a needle in, DeLiberato said. “There was a lot of blood,” she told reporters. Unable to place the central line, the medical team accessed a vein in his right shoulder just before the warden received a phone call and announced the execution was off, according to DeLiberato.
DeLiberato was speaking with reporters when the governor’s office issued the reprieve. She began crying. “That’s amazing!” she said. “I’m so grateful!”
The failed procedure is part of a pattern. Since 2009, at least six other executions in Alabama, Idaho, and Ohio have been halted because of IV access problems, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. In Idaho in 2024, medical team members tried eight times to establish a line on Thomas Creech, one of the country’s longest-serving death row inmates, before abandoning the attempt. Idaho Gov. Brad Little subsequently signed a law making the firing squad the state’s primary method of execution.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey paused executions for several months in 2022 after officials called off the lethal injection of Kenneth Eugene Smith — the third time Alabama had been unable to complete an execution because of IV difficulties since 2018.
“Tony Carruthers’ case raised serious concerns about mental illness, representation, innocence, and access to DNA testing,” the Death Penalty Information Center said in an emailed statement. “The state’s failed attempt today to execute him presents an additional issue surrounding the qualifications of the people tasked with executing prisoners.”
The execution attempt itself was largely invisible to outside witnesses. Under Tennessee’s execution policies, blinds between the witness room and the chamber are kept closed until the IV insertion team has departed. An Associated Press reporter was in attendance, but a state rule — one the AP and other media organizations are challenging — prohibits media witnesses from observing the IV insertion. On Thursday, media witnesses sat in a darkened room for more than an hour without the blinds being raised. Witnesses reported hearing what sounded like groans through a crack beneath a door.
Carruthers, 57, was convicted of the 1994 kidnappings and murders of Marcellos Anderson, Anderson’s mother Delois Anderson, and Frederick Tucker. Authorities said Marcellos Anderson worked as a drug dealer and that Carruthers was attempting to take over the trade in their Memphis neighborhood.
At trial, Carruthers was forced to represent himself after repeatedly complaining about court-appointed attorneys and threatening to harm several of them. No physical evidence tied him to the killings; he was convicted primarily on testimony from people who said they heard him confess or discuss the crimes. The ACLU said it would continue pressing for DNA testing of evidence in the case, arguing the testing should have been performed long ago. Carruthers’ attorneys have also argued that mental health issues leave him incompetent to be executed.
The halted execution comes during a period of elevated execution activity nationally. The number of executions in the U.S. rose from 25 in 2024 to 47 in 2025, driven primarily by a sharp increase in Florida, which carried out 19 executions last year compared with one the prior year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Four states have conducted 14 executions so far this year, including one in Florida on Thursday evening, and 10 more are scheduled.
Tennessee resumed executions last year after a three-year pause triggered by the discovery that the state had not properly tested lethal injection drugs for purity and potency. An independent review later found that none of the drugs prepared for the seven inmates Tennessee executed since 2018 had been fully tested. The state attorney general’s office also conceded in court that two of the people most responsible for overseeing Tennessee’s lethal injection drugs had “incorrectly testified” under oath that officials were testing the chemicals as required.