NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Attorneys and death penalty advocates this week called on Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee to halt all executions in the state after what they described as a “botched” execution attempt that left death row prisoner Tony Carruthers physically and emotionally traumatized following more than 90 minutes of failed attempts to establish IV access.
At a press conference in Nashville, attorneys representing Carruthers and plaintiffs challenging Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol said the state’s execution procedures are deeply flawed, inadequately reviewed and incapable of ensuring constitutional executions. The attorneys argued that what happened to Carruthers on May 22 was foreseeable and directly tied to deficiencies already identified in ongoing litigation challenging Tennessee’s 2025 lethal injection protocol.
“We’re all here because on Thursday the Tennessee Department of Correction [TDOC] botched an attempted execution of our client, Tony Carruthers,” said Amy Harwell, first assistant federal public defender for the Middle District of Tennessee. “They subjected him to over an hour and a half of torture.”
Harwell said execution personnel “poked and poked and poked him more than a dozen times in his arms, his hands, his feet, and his chest” while attempting unsuccessfully to establish IV access.
Although Harwell thanked Lee for issuing a one-year reprieve after the execution attempt collapsed, she said the reprieve alone does not address the systemic problems surrounding Tennessee’s execution procedures.
“We’re here today because we’re calling on Governor Lee to let the courts decide the Burns case before subjecting anyone else to the lethal injection protocol and to the sort of torture that Mr. Caruthers suffered on Thursday,” Harwell said.
The Burns litigation, filed in Davidson County Chancery Court, challenges Tennessee’s 2025 lethal injection protocol and alleges the state weakened safeguards after a previous investigation uncovered extensive noncompliance with execution procedures.
Kit Thomas, deputy chief of the Capital Habeas Unit and a member of the Burns litigation team, said the current crisis traces back to 2022, when Gov. Lee halted the execution of Oscar Smith after questions arose about whether required drug testing had been performed.
“We later learned that in the hours before Mr. Smith’s scheduled execution, officials were scrambling to figure out whether the TDOC official in charge of lethal injection drug had ensured that the required testing had been done,” Thomas said. “As it turned out, it did not.”
Following that incident, Lee ordered an independent investigation led by former U.S. Attorney Edward Stanton. According to Thomas, the resulting report found “pervasive non-compliance by TDOC with its own lethal injection procedures.”
But Thomas said the state’s response failed to correct those deficiencies.
“When our team first reviewed that new protocol, we were shocked to see that TDOC’s primary change was to remove clear and specific procedural requirements and protections in favor of amorphous standards,” Thomas said. “TDOC didn’t solve the problems identified in the Stanton report. It concealed them behind vaguer rules and weaker safeguards.”
Thomas said attorneys specifically warned the state that the revised protocol failed to ensure personnel were adequately trained to establish IV access safely and reliably.
“Difficulty establishing IV lines is not a hypothetical problem in executions,” Thomas said. “It’s a known complication that has caused prolonged and botched executions across this country for years.”
She added, “That failure wasn’t unforeseeable. It was predicted and TDOC went ahead anyway.”
Thomas also alleged broader incompetence surrounding Tennessee executions under the current protocol. She noted that during the execution of Oscar Smith, officials failed to properly document cardiac activity because the state had not installed a printer on the EKG machine.
She further said that during the execution of Byron Black, witnesses reported Black “lifted his head, moved his feet, groaned, and reported being in pain.” Thomas said the execution physician, Dr. Mark Fowler, failed to review EKG data before declaring Black dead.
Thomas said Fowler later admitted during a deposition that he had placed a central line only “a handful of times” more than a decade ago and acknowledged complications during one prior procedure.
“He also admitted that he doesn’t have privileges to set central lines at any hospital in the country,” Thomas said. “They knew he wasn’t competent to place a central line and yet they continued to pay him to serve as their physician for the execution of Tony Carruthers.”
Maria DeLiberato, senior counsel with the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project and one of Carruthers’ attorneys, gave a detailed account of what she witnessed inside the execution chamber. She described confusion, repeated failed attempts to insert IV lines, and what she characterized as extreme suffering inflicted on her client.
“What happened next was beyond barbaric,” DeLiberato said.
DeLiberato said execution personnel repeatedly searched for veins while Carruthers remained strapped to a gurney.
“I could see the looks on the faces of the personnel,” she said. “They were exerting physical force, grunting, trying to get the vein into Tony’s body over and over asking for a bigger needle, a smaller needle, a different needle.”
She said she attempted to contact outside attorneys once it became apparent the procedure was failing but was unable to immediately access a phone.
“I can’t explain to you how absurd it is that an attorney for a death row client who is about to be executed can’t get access to a telephone,” DeLiberato said.
According to DeLiberato, prison officials forced her to leave the execution chamber to search for a functioning telephone while her client remained restrained inside.
“They take me out of the chamber away from my client,” she said. “The only person in the room who is there to speak for him, they take me out.”
She described finding phones “on the floor” that “weren’t plugged in” before eventually reaching outside attorneys.
DeLiberato also said the medical team discussed whether Fowler would attempt to place a central line despite questions about his qualifications.
“I objected,” she said. “I said, ‘He’s not qualified. He’s admitted so.’”
According to DeLiberato, Fowler responded, “I am too qualified,” before attempting the procedure.
She said the physician then attempted to insert a central line into Carruthers’ chest after administering lidocaine.
“The doctor says, ‘Can you feel that?’ And Tony says, ‘It hurts. It hurts,’” DeLiberato recounted. “And the doctor says, ‘It’s just pressure.’ And he cuts him.”
DeLiberato said Carruthers moaned and groaned while Fowler repeatedly failed to establish the line.
“He’s absolutely oblivious,” she said. “This doctor is oblivious to the fact that he is causing agony to Mr. Carruthers.”
Eventually, according to DeLiberato, the warden received a phone call and halted the execution attempt.
“At this point, the level of incompetence and cruelty that I’ve witnessed, nothing would have surprised me in that moment,” she said.
She later learned Lee had issued a one-year reprieve.
“I am grateful that the governor stopped this barbaric event and gave us a year,” DeLiberato said.
Attorneys also raised continuing concerns about Carruthers’ claims of innocence. During a Vanguard interview Wednesday, Tennessee advocates Stacy Rector and Laura Porter said the case involves untested DNA evidence, allegations involving a paid informant and longstanding questions about Carruthers’ mental competency.
“This case has a lot of twists and turns beginning with the fact that Mr. Carruthers was forced to represent himself at his trial,” Rector said. “That alone to me should have been remedied years ago.”
Rector said there is “no physical evidence tying him to the crime” and noted that “there is now DNA fingerprint evidence that the courts and the state are refusing to test.”
She described Carruthers as “a possibly innocent man with a lot of strong evidence in his favor in terms of his innocence.”
Rector said Gov. Lee should order the state to stop opposing DNA testing.
“It just seems like this should be the goal of the system to determine actually who commits a crime and then to ensure that we are not executing an innocent person,” Rector said.
Laura Porter, another Tennessee death penalty abolition advocate, said the state itself is undermining confidence in capital punishment.
“Tennessee is effectively making the case against the death penalty,” Porter said. “It just feels like human beings cannot effectively run a death penalty process.”
Porter also criticized what she described as a legal culture prioritizing finality over fairness.
“There is a culture of valuing finality over accuracy and over fairness,” Porter said. “And when you have the power of taking someone’s life, that is really alarming.”
Advocates noted Tennessee still has additional executions scheduled this year, including one in August involving Darrell Hines, whom Rector said has suffered a massive stroke and has innocence-related claims in his case as well.
Thomas warned that unless the courts complete review of Tennessee’s execution protocol, “this exact same thing could happen” again.
“The torture inflicted on Mr. Carruthers last week was not just predictable,” Harwell said. “It was predicted.”
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