NASHVILLE, Tenn. (Nashville Banner) — This story was originally published by the Nashville Banner. Sign up for their newsletter.
With Darrell Hines scheduled to be executed on Aug. 13, his attorneys released documents Thursday highlighting the troubled history of executions overseen by Tennessee Department of Correction Commissioner, and previous Arizona prison official, Frank Strada.
They highlighted three executions during Strada’s tenure in Arizona that were “marked by prolonged and problematic attempts to establish IV access — eerily similar to the botched attempted execution of Tony Carruthers in Tennessee” and pointed to a 2024 review of Arizona’s death penalty that uncovered various issues.
The defense team says Strada brought those sorts of issues with him to Tennessee, where he oversaw the 2025 adoption of the lethal injection protocol at the center of controversy now.
This article first appeared on Nashville Banner and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
September 11, 2001 is a day most associate with terror and tragedy. Austin Pollack shares a story from that day about hope and persistence: the effort to save a little girl’s life – with an organ donation. The problem? The young patient was in Houston, and her life-saving liver here in Nashville. With the grounding of all civilian aircraft, how could it be done? “Nobody ever said this isn’t possible.”
- Rhori Johnston
