NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A Davidson County judge has allowed nine Tennessee death row prisoners to expand their lawsuit challenging the state’s 2025 lethal injection protocol to include allegations involving two failed execution attempts earlier this year.
Chancellor Russell T. Perkins granted the prisoners’ request on Friday, Nov. 6, to supplement their complaint in Burns v. Strada, allowing them to introduce allegations concerning the attempted executions of Tony Carruthers and Christa Pike.
The lawsuit, filed in March 2025, challenges Tennessee’s single-drug lethal injection protocol, arguing that inadequate safeguards, insufficient training and secrecy surrounding execution procedures create an unconstitutional risk of severe pain and suffering.
Carruthers was scheduled to be executed in May 2026, but execution personnel spent more than an hour attempting to establish intravenous access before officials stopped the procedure without administering lethal drugs.
According to the supplemental complaint, medical personnel repeatedly punctured Carruthers’ arms and hands while attempting to establish IV access. Efforts to insert a central line also failed, leaving him with at least a dozen puncture wounds and possible internal injuries.
Gov. Bill Lee subsequently granted Carruthers a one-year reprieve.
Four months later, on Sept. 30, Pike survived the administration of two doses of pentobarbital, the drug Tennessee uses in its lethal injection protocol.
Witnesses reported that Pike continued gasping and struggling to breathe after the drugs were administered. According to court filings, she remained conscious after the first dose and complained of a burning sensation in her arm.
Pike was eventually transported to an outside hospital in critical condition. She remained unresponsive for nearly a week before regaining consciousness on Oct. 6.
Her attorneys subsequently reported that she suffered complications including pneumonia, a blood clot, difficulty swallowing and walking, swollen hands, cognitive difficulties and impaired movement in her arms and hands.
The execution attempt also raised concerns about Tennessee’s emergency response procedures.
According to reporting by WPLN, emergency dispatch recordings revealed communication problems that delayed an ambulance’s arrival at the prison. Pike remained on the execution gurney for approximately 90 minutes before being transported to a hospital.
On Sept. 30, the Tennessee Supreme Court denied an emergency motion seeking medical intervention after state officials represented that Pike was receiving emergency medical treatment.
On Oct. 7, Davidson County Chancery Court Judge I’Ashea Myles issued an emergency evidence preservation order requiring the Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) to preserve materials related to the failed execution, including medical records, equipment, communications and other evidence.
Following Pike’s failed execution, Lee suspended further executions through the end of 2026 and ordered an independent review of the state’s execution procedures.
The two failed execution attempts have become central to the prisoners’ argument that the risks identified in their original complaint were not merely hypothetical.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs, including Kit Thomas, contend that the state’s execution procedures have produced precisely the problems they warned about when the lawsuit was filed.
According to WSMV, Thomas criticized state officials for disregarding those warnings and maintaining secrecy surrounding the execution process.
The supplemental complaint, spanning nearly 400 pages, also documents alleged problems during other executions conducted under Tennessee’s revised protocol.
According to WPLN’s Nov. 6 reporting, the complaint describes a failure to load paper into the electrocardiogram (EKG) machine during Oscar Franklin Smith’s May 2025 execution.
The complaint also alleges that EKG recordings from Byron Black’s execution showed a normal heart rhythm for several minutes after he was pronounced dead.
According to the filing, the physician overseeing Black’s execution testified that he did not rely on the EKG when determining whether Black had died, instead checking for a pulse and listening for heart sounds with a stethoscope.
The supplemental complaint also cites autopsy findings involving Black and Harold Wayne Nichols that indicated pulmonary edema, a condition involving fluid accumulation in the lungs that can produce sensations associated with drowning.
Attorneys further documented concerns about the execution of Darrell Hines in August 2026, alleging that he exhibited labored breathing and discoloration of his face during the procedure.
The prisoners’ legal challenge also raises questions about the training provided to execution personnel.
According to a November 2025 deposition cited in court filings, Riverbend Maximum Security Institution Warden Kenneth Nelsen testified that execution team members did not practice inserting IV lines during training sessions.
Nelsen reportedly testified that the department’s commissioner had directed that IV insertions not be performed during practice and that execution personnel did not rehearse emergency procedures.
Attorneys representing the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office have maintained that the prisoners’ original claims were speculative and did not establish that the protocol would produce unconstitutional suffering.
During the Nov. 6 hearing, state attorneys did not categorically oppose updating the complaint but raised procedural objections, arguing that the prisoners were using an improper legal mechanism to introduce additional allegations.
Perkins rejected that procedural challenge and granted the motion to supplement the complaint while declining to resolve the other legal disputes raised by the parties.
The ruling allows the prisoners to introduce evidence concerning the executions conducted under the revised protocol but does not determine whether Tennessee’s procedures violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
Under Tennessee Rule of Civil Procedure 15.04, courts may permit parties to supplement pleadings with allegations concerning events that occurred after the original complaint was filed.
Perkins emphasized the limited scope of his decision during the hearing.
“I’m not ruling on all of these things lurking under the surface,” Perkins said, according to WPLN. “I’m ruling on the motion to supplement.”
The decision allows the prisoners to pursue their challenge using evidence from actual executions rather than relying exclusively on predictions about how the protocol might operate.
The state is expected to seek dismissal of the supplemental complaint before a trial currently scheduled for February 2027.
The ruling follows the Vanguard’s Oct. 30 coverage of the ongoing legal challenge. Requests for comment on the Nov. 6 order were sent to plaintiffs’ attorney Kit Thomas and the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office.
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