Tony Carruthers’ attorneys are pressing Tennessee for assurances about the drugs state officials plan to use in his lethal injection execution Thursday, raising a concern that the state could rely on medicines that have passed their expiration dates.
Carruthers’ case has turned the focus on a detail that death-penalty opponents and defense lawyers have increasingly raised as states attempt to keep key information about their execution drug sources and handling secret. In recent filings and outreach, Carruthers’ attorneys said they are not just challenging the state’s lethal injection process in general, but also whether the specific drugs in use for the scheduled date remain within their approved safety window.
According to the attorneys, they twice asked the Tennessee Department of Correction last month whether it had secured the appropriate drugs for Carruthers’ execution date and whether they had not expired. The requests sought direct confirmation, including assurances that the chemicals would remain usable for the intended purpose at the time of the execution.
Assistant Attorney General John W. Ayers responded but did not provide the straightforward expiration confirmation the defense asked for. In Ayers’ reply, he said the Department of Correction would comply with its lethal-injection protocol, which he described as including regular inventory checks intended to monitor expiration dates.
Carruthers, 57, was sentenced to death after being found guilty of kidnappings and murders in 1994 involving Marcellos Anderson and Anderson’s mother, Delois Anderson, and Frederick Tucker. The dispute over drugs arises as the state prepares to carry out the execution on Thursday in a case that remains under legal scrutiny.
When The Associated Press asked the Tennessee Department of Correction on Wednesday whether the planned drugs are expired, the department declined to answer. The governor’s office of Gov. Bill Lee also did not immediately respond to a similar inquiry.
Federal Public Defender Amy Harwell, writing by email, argued that expiration dates reflect when a drug can no longer be safely relied upon to produce the desired effect. Harwell wrote: “In the execution context, this may mean a slow, lingering death without a reliable loss of consciousness, as the body painfully and fitfully shuts down,” adding that expiration concerns are not merely technical.
Harwell also pointed to what she said was an apparent inconsistency in how assurances were handled in other Tennessee executions. She wrote that Tennessee previously offered a form of assurance in the December execution of Harold Nichols—through a declaration stating the chemicals to be used would not expire before that execution—while declining, in her view, to provide similar assurances to Carruthers. She said the difference “raises serious concerns that TDOC is, in fact, intending to use expired drugs,” in a May 18 follow-up letter.
The broader issue is not limited to Tennessee. States have reported difficulty obtaining lethal injection drugs in time, and some executions have been delayed or halted due to problems tied to the medications’ expiration dates. In South Carolina, executions were reportedly on hold for 12 years as the state struggled to obtain drugs, and the eventual solution included a shield law intended to keep the identity of the supplier secret.
Other states have faced similar timing and drug-handling disputes. In Arkansas, then-Gov. Asa Hutchinson issued death warrants in 2017 as officials sought to act before a batch of lethal injection drugs set to expire ran out; four executions were carried out while other scheduled executions were later stayed. In Texas, a group of inmates unsuccessfully tried in 2023 to block the state from using drugs they alleged were expired and unsafe, according to the report, and Idaho’s death-penalty litigation has also included questions about drug expiration.
Tennessee’s own history with execution drugs has included controversy. In 2022, Oscar Smith came within minutes of being executed before Bill Lee issued a surprise reprieve after revelations that the state’s lethal injection drugs were not being properly tested for purity and potency, according to the reporting. Executions were then paused for two years to allow for an independent investigation, and the state later restarted executions in 2025 after releasing a new lethal injection process in December 2024.
Even after changes, the report described ongoing difficulties with how lethal injection procedures play out. When Byron Black was executed by lethal injection in August, he said he was “hurting so bad,” and the state provided no explanation in the reporting for the cause of the pain.