Tennessee death row inmate Tony Carruthers is scheduled to be executed Thursday, and his attorneys have raised new concerns about whether the state will use lethal-injection drugs that have not expired. Carruthers’ lawyers said they asked Tennessee Department of Correction officials last month for confirmation about the specific drugs for his execution date and assurance that they would not be expired. They received a response that, in their view, did not address the core request.
In a letter responding to the questions, Assistant Attorney General John W. Ayers told Carruthers’ attorneys that the department will comply with its lethal injection protocol, which includes regular inventory of the drugs to monitor expiration dates. Carruthers’ attorneys said Ayers’ response did not directly answer whether the drugs had expired.
The Tennessee Department of Correction declined to provide that information when asked by The Associated Press on Wednesday whether the drugs it plans to use to kill Carruthers are expired. The Associated Press also sought comment from Gov. Bill Lee’s office, which did not immediately respond.
Federal Public Defender Amy Harwell, representing Carruthers, said in an email that drug expiration dates reflect when a drug can no longer be safely relied upon to obtain the desired result. She wrote that, in the execution context, expired drugs could mean a “slow, lingering death without a reliable loss of consciousness,” describing how the body can shut down “painfully and fitfully.”
Harwell also pointed to differences in the way Tennessee handled similar assurances for other death row inmates. She wrote in a May 18 follow-up to Ayers that Tennessee offered assurances to Deputy Attorney General Cody Brandon’s filings ahead of Harold Nichols’ December execution, describing a declaration that the chemicals used would not expire before execution and had not expired. In her view, Tennessee’s willingness to provide such assurances for Nichols, but not for Carruthers, raised “serious concerns” that the state intended to use expired drugs.
The dispute sits inside a broader U.S. pattern that attorneys and courts have repeatedly wrestled with: public opposition to executions and other barriers have made it harder for prisons to obtain lethal injection drugs, while states often try to limit what they disclose. Some states have delayed executions for years or changed course after drug supply problems tied to expiration dates.
South Carolina, for example, put executions on hold for 12 years while it struggled to obtain drugs, eventually resuming only after passing a shield law intended to keep the identity of suppliers secret. Tennessee has argued in court that its own shield protections extend to information about expiration dates, the AP reported. Tennessee’s lawyers have also suggested that they can provide other kinds of assurances without disclosing the underlying details.
Other states have faced similar difficulties as lawyers challenged whether drugs were safe and unexpired. Arkansas sought death warrants in 2017 to beat the expiration timeline on a batch of lethal injection drugs, executing some of the prisoners while others received stays. In Texas, inmates in 2023 unsuccessfully tried to stop an execution by alleging the drugs were expired and unsafe, and officials denied the claims. In Idaho, federal defender officials raised concerns in 2024 when the state planned another attempt to execute Thomas Creech; court documents described that the drugs were returned to the supplier after they were expired, and Idaho later changed its primary execution method to firing squad, in part due to lethal injection drug procurement challenges.
Tennessee has also had previous problems with execution drug handling. In 2022, Oscar Smith came within minutes of being executed before Gov. Bill Lee issued a surprise reprieve, according to the report, which revealed that the state had not been properly testing lethal injection drugs for purity and potency. Executions were on hold for two years while the state investigated. The state attorney general’s office later conceded in court that two of the officials most responsible for overseeing lethal injection drugs “incorrectly testified” under oath that officials were testing the chemicals as required, the Associated Press reported.
Tennessee released a new lethal injection process in December 2024 and restarted executions in 2025. The Associated Press also reported that the new process has not been fully smooth; when Byron Black was executed by lethal injection in August, he said, “hurting so bad,” and prison officials offered no explanation for what might have caused the pain.