Tennessee officials called off the lethal injection of Tony Carruthers on Thursday after execution team members struggled for more than an hour to establish an intravenous line, Gov. Bill Lee said soon afterward that the state would not try again for at least a year.
Tennessee said a medical team quickly established a primary IV line but could not find a suitable vein for a backup line required by the state’s execution protocol. The state also reported that attempts to insert a central line failed, and staff therefore ended the execution attempt.
In a written statement, the Tennessee Department of Corrections said officials were unable to find an appropriate vein for the backup IV line and that efforts to insert a central line also did not work. The statement said the execution was called off after those difficulties.
Maria DeLiberato, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney representing Carruthers, told reporters after the reprieve that she saw Carruthers “wincing and groaning” while officials worked to establish an IV. She said it was “horrible” to watch and began crying as she spoke, after the governor’s office issued the decision to stop the attempt.
DeLiberato said witnesses in Tennessee had limited access because blinds between the witness room and the execution chamber were kept closed until the IV insertion team left. She said media witnesses sat in a dark room for more than an hour but the blinds were never raised, though witnesses could hear what sounded like groans through a crack beneath a door connecting the two rooms.
DeLiberato said she was in the execution chamber and described what she saw during the IV attempts. She said that after staff established an IV line in Carruthers’ right arm, they tried his other arm, his left hand and his left foot before attempting to establish a central line. She said Carruthers groaned as a doctor pushed a needle in and that she saw two or three puncture wounds and “There was a lot of blood,” according to her account.
DeLiberato said medical personnel were unable to establish a central line and then accessed a vein in Carruthers’ right shoulder before the warden received a phone call and announced the execution was off, according to her account. The Associated Press reported that state rules disputed by news organizations limit media witnesses from observing the IV insertion.
Carruthers, 57, was convicted in the 1994 kidnappings and murders of Marcellos Anderson, his mother, Delois Anderson, and Frederick Tucker, according to court proceedings described by the AP. Authorities said Marcellos Anderson was a drug dealer and that Carruthers was trying to take over the illegal drug trade in their Memphis neighborhood.
The AP reported that Carruthers was forced to represent himself at trial after repeatedly complaining about court-appointed attorneys and threatening to harm several of them. The AP also reported there was no physical evidence linking Carruthers to the killings and that the conviction relied primarily on testimony from people who said they had heard Carruthers confess or discuss the crimes.
The ACLU said it would continue to push for DNA testing on evidence in the case and said it should have been done long ago, while Carruthers’ attorneys have also argued that mental health issues render him incompetent to be executed, according to the AP account. The Death Penalty Information Center said the case raised “serious concerns about mental illness, representation, innocence, and access to DNA testing” and said Thursday’s failed attempt presented an additional issue regarding the qualifications of the people tasked with carrying out executions.
The IV failure in Tennessee followed similar halts elsewhere in recent years. Since 2009, executions in Alabama, Idaho and Ohio have been halted over difficulties establishing an IV, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. In Idaho in 2024, medical teams tried eight times to establish a line to execute Thomas Creech before the state stopped the attempt, and Idaho Gov. Brad Little later signed a law making firing squad the state’s primary method of execution, according to the AP.
The AP also reported that in Alabama, Gov. Kay Ivey paused executions for several months after Kenneth Eugene Smith’s lethal injection attempt was called off in 2022, and said it was the third time since 2018 Alabama had been unable to conduct executions because of problems with IV lines.
Across the country, executions have been increasing. The Death Penalty Information Center reported that the number of executions in the United States rose from 25 in 2024 to 47 last year, driven in part by an increase in Florida. It said four states had carried out 14 executions so far this year, with additional executions scheduled, including one Thursday evening in Florida.
In Tennessee, the AP reported that the state had its last execution in December and began a new round last year after a three-year pause, after officials found the state was not properly testing lethal injection drugs for purity and potency. The AP reported an independent review later found that none of the drugs prepared for seven Tennessee inmates executed since 2018 had been fully tested, and that the state attorney general’s office conceded in court that two people responsible for overseeing the drugs “incorrectly testified” under oath that officials were testing the chemicals as required.