NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Defense attorneys are calling on Gov. Bill Lee to pause all executions in Tennessee following the failed lethal injection of death row inmate Tony Carruthers on Thursday, May 21, 2026.
"We ask Governor Lee to give time for the courts to complete that review and to do their job," Amy Harwell, First Assistant Federal Public Defender for the Middle District of Tennessee, said.
Attorneys say the fight began months before the failed execution, when they challenged Tennessee's 2025 lethal injection protocol in Burns v. Strata, an ongoing case in Davidson County Chancery Court.
"For more than a year, we warned that the 2025 protocol failed to ensure that execution participants were adequately trained and competent to establish IV access. We warned that the attorney witnesses needed prompt telephone access in the event something went wrong. TDOC dismissed our warnings and Mr. Carruthers paid the price," Kit Thomas, part of the Federal Public Defender's litigation team, said.
Witnesses described the execution attempt as deeply troubling.
"It was absolute agony from an emotional standpoint and then it became physical," Maria DeLiberato, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union and part of Carruthers' legal team, said.
According to DeLiberato, staff repeatedly tried and failed to insert the IV.
"They were exerting physical force, grunting, trying to like get the vein into Tony's body over and over, asking for a bigger needle, a smaller needle, a different needle. Each needle clink, clink, clink into the little tray on the receptacle," DeLiberato said.
Harwell said Carruthers was poked more than a dozen times — in his arms, hands, feet, and chest — during the failed procedure.
Attorneys also raised concerns about the execution physician, Dr. Mark Fowler, saying he lacks privileges to set central lines at any hospital in the country.
"During our deposition of Dr. Fowler, he admitted that he had placed a central line only a handful of times more than a decade ago, and that during one procedure, he had experienced complications," Thomas said.
Under state protocol, a doctor must insert a central line — a long tube placed into a large vein — if an IV in the arm cannot be established. Attorneys argue the rules do not allow the team to retry the primary IV method after the central line fails.
In addition to training concerns, attorneys are questioning whether the Tennessee Department of Correction used expired drugs during the execution attempt. TDOC has not publicly responded to that allegation.
Carruthers was convicted in 1994 of killing 3 people — a mother, her teenage son, and his friend — in what prosecutors described as a murder-for-hire plot. He was sentenced to death in Shelby County.
During the ongoing litigation, attorneys say executions should be halted until the court determines whether Tennessee can "reliably and competently" carry out its current lethal injection process.
3 more executions are scheduled in Tennessee this year. The next is set for August for Darrell Hines. The state has not said whether the protocol will be reviewed before then.
Do you have more information about this story? You can email me at Patsy.Montesinos@NewsChannel5.com
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