Tennessee stops execution after failing to find inmate's vein for lethal drugs, attorney says

Tennessee halted the execution of death row inmate Tony Carruthers on Thursday, his attorney said, after the officers tasked with establishing an intravenous line through which to administer lethal drugs failed to do so for more than an hour.

"They tortured him," said the attorney Maria DeLiberato, in a text message that CBS News obtained through the American Civil Liberties Union. "When they tried to do the central line, they put a shot of lidocaine in his chest and he told them he could still feel the puncture and they did the puncture anyway."

In the text, DeLiberato said Carruthers, 57, was groaning and bleeding from his attempted injection sites. She said officers tried three times to establish the line in the inmate's arms and feet, and also attempted to access a vein in his neck.

The Tennessee Department of Corrections said in a statement that staff "quickly established" a primary intravenous line but were "unable to immediately establish a backup line," which is a second line that staff are required to insert under the terms of the state's execution protocol. 

"The team continued to follow the protocol, but could not find another suitable vein," the department said. "The team attempted to insert a central line pursuant to the protocol, but the procedure was unsuccessful. The execution was then called off."

Carruthers' defense team had asked a Tennessee district court judge to stop his execution in an emergency order, which alleged that the repeated attempts "constituted cruel and unusual punishment" and violated his constitutional rights. The judge denied that request on the grounds that his team had not met their burden of proof to demonstrate the state's actions were "cruel and unusual."

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said in a statement that he granted a temporary reprieve from execution for Carruthers, which was set to last for a year. In a separate statement responding to his clemency request earlier on Thursday, Lee had upheld the state's death sentence.

"After deliberate consideration of Tony Von Carruthers' request for clemency, and after a thorough review of the case, I am upholding the sentence of the State of Tennessee," the governor said. 

Carruthers was sentenced to death after being found guilty of the 1994 kidnappings and murders of Marcellos Anderson; his mother, Delois Anderson; and Frederick Tucker.  

But advocates have long called on Lee to halt Carruthers' execution so that his legal team could more deeply evaluate DNA evidence that they believed might exonerate him. Throughout his 30 years on Tennessee's death row, Carruthers has maintained his innocence.

In statements released alongside the emergency motion on Thursday, Carruthers' attorneys described the state's decision to move ahead with the execution despite blocking his efforts to run forensic analyses as "a grave injustice." His defense team's motion for a "post-conviction" DNA test on evidence taken from the victims was denied by the state, court filings show.

"This injustice turned barbaric when Tennessee's efforts to set an IV line for the lethal drugs failed and the executioners continued to press forward anyway with the botched execution," said attorney and Capital Punishment Project director Cassy Stubbs.

The ACLU, in a petition, accused Tennessee leadership for neglecting to address issues with Carruthers' case. It said his conviction rested on the testimonies of "paid jailhouse informants," and no physical evidence connects him to the crime. 

The post-conviction forensic testing had sought to evaluate "unmatched fingerprints and DNA from the crime scene," which "have never been compared" to an alternative suspect that Carruthers' co-defendant identified more than a decade ago, according to the ACLU.

Carruthers would have been the first person executed in Tennessee this year. The state resumed executions in 2025 following a three-year hiatus, brought on because controversy surrounding its lethal drugs triggered criticism of the state's approach to the death penalty and its legality.