Tennessee officials on Thursday called off the lethal injection of Tony Carruthers, who was convicted of kidnapping and murdering three people in 1994, after his executioners tried and failed for over an hour to establish an intravenous line. Gov. Bill Lee announced soon afterward that the state would not try again for at least a year.
In a written statement, the Tennessee Department of Corrections said medical personnel had quickly established a primary IV line but were unable to find a suitable vein for a backup line as required by the state’s execution protocol. Efforts to insert a central line also failed, and officials called off the execution.
Maria DeLiberato, an attorney for Carruthers, said she saw him “wincing and groaning” while officials attempted to find a vein, calling it “horrible” to watch.
DeLiberato was addressing reporters when the governor’s office issued the reprieve. She began crying.
“That’s amazing!” she said. “I’m so grateful!”
States have repeatedly had to halt executions because of difficulties establishing an IV. In Idaho in 2024, medical team members tried eight times to establish a line to execute Thomas Creech, one of the nation’s longest-serving death row inmates, before calling it off; Idaho Gov. Brad Little subsequently signed a law making firing squad the state’s primary method of execution.
In Alabama, Gov. Kay Ivey paused executions for several months after officials called off the lethal injection of Kenneth Eugene Smith in 2022. It was the third time since 2018 Alabama had been unable to conduct executions due to problems with IV lines.
This is a developing story last updated at 2:45 p.m.
Reported earlier
Attorneys for a Tennessee death row inmate say they are concerned the state may be planning to use expired lethal injection drugs at his execution on Thursday, a growing concern across the country as states work to keep most information about their drugs secret.
Tony Carruthers’ attorneys twice asked the Tennessee Department of Correction last month whether it had secured the appropriate drugs for his execution date and for assurance the drugs had not expired.
Assistant Attorney General John W. Ayers’ response did not directly answer but said the department will comply with its lethal injection protocol — which includes regular inventory of the drugs to monitor expiration dates.
Carruthers, 57, was sentenced to death after being found guilty of the 1994 kidnappings and murders of Marcellos Anderson, his mother Delois Anderson, and Frederick Tucker.
Continuing coverage: Death penalty in Tennessee
The Tennessee Department of Correction declined to answer on Wednesday when asked by The Associated Press whether the drugs they plan to use to kill Carruthers are expired. Gov. Bill Lee’s office did not immediately respond to a similar inquiry.
Federal Public Defender Amy Harwell said in an email that expiration dates reflect when a drug can no longer be safely relied upon to obtain the desired result.
“In the execution context, this may mean a slow, lingering death without a reliable loss of consciousness, as the body painfully and fitfully shuts down,” Harwell wrote.
Public opposition to executions has made it difficult for prisons to obtain execution drugs, among the lingering issues for those who use lethal injection. Some states have been forced to speed up executions or stop them entirely due to expiration dates on drugs.
In South Carolina, executions were on hold for 12 years while the state struggled to obtain drugs. They were eventually able to get them only after the state passed a shield law that would keep the identity of the supplier secret.
Tennessee has argued in court that its shield extends to revealing expiration dates. Just before the December execution of Harold Nichols, Tennessee Deputy Attorney General Cody Brandon offered instead to provide a declaration “attesting that the chemicals to be used in Mr. Nichols’ execution will not expire before his execution and have not expired,” according to a transcript of the proceedings.
“The fact that TDOC was willing to provide such assurances to Mr. Nichols, but not Mr. Carruthers, raises serious concerns that TDOC is, in fact, intending to use expired drugs,” Harwell wrote in a May 18 follow-up to Ayers’ letter.
‘Paranoia and delusions’
Carruthers was forced to represent himself at trial repeatedly complaining about court-appointed attorneys and threatening to harm several of them.
There was no physical evidence tying Carruthers to the killings, and he was convicted primarily on the basis of testimony from people who claimed to have heard him confess to or discuss the crimes.
They include a man who was later revealed to be a police informant and told media he was paid for his testimony. A co-defendant, James Montgomery, was originally sentenced to death along with Carruthers but was later resentenced and released from prison in 2015, according to court filings.
Authorities said Marcellos Anderson was a drug dealer, and Carruthers was trying to take over the illegal drug trade in their Memphis neighborhood. His attorneys have said that Carruthers’ “paranoia and delusions” prevented him from being able to cooperate with court-appointed counsel, but the judge viewed this behavior as willful.
The Tennessee Supreme Court said on appeal that Carruthers’ actions before the trial jury were offensive and self-destructive but the situation in which he found himself was one of his own making. If the execution goes forward as scheduled, Carruthers will be the first person to be executed after being forced to represent himself in more than a century, according to a clemency petition to Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee.
In the petition, Carruthers’ attorneys argue that the reason he was sentenced to death was because a medical examiner testified the victims were buried alive, going into excruciating detail for the jury. He later withdrew that claim and subsequent experts have said it was false.
Carruthers’ attorneys have tried to show that he is incompetent to be executed. They claim in court filings that Carruthers believes the government is bluffing about executing him in order to coerce him into accepting a plea deal that exists only in his mind. That way, Carruthers believes, the government can avoid paying him what he thinks are millions of dollars it owes him. He is convinced that his own attorneys are part of a conspiracy against him and refuses to even speak with them, according to court filings.
Arkansas, Idaho have faced challenges
The number of executions in the U.S. surged from 25 in 2024 to 47 last year, driven by a sharp increase in Florida. That state carried out 19 executions in 2025, up from one the previous year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. So far this year, four states have executed 13 people, and 11 other executions are scheduled.
It’s not unusual to see several executions over a short period of time. Last year, four people were executed over three days in March in Oklahoma, Florida, Louisiana and Arizona. Another five people were executed over a week in October in Arizona, Mississippi, Missouri, Florida and Indiana, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
In 2017, Arkansas’ then-Gov. Asa Hutchinson issued death warrants for eight prisoners on the state’s death row in an effort to beat the clock on a batch of lethal injection drugs that were set to expire. The state executed four of the men, but four others were granted stays.
Arkansas has not had any executions since then, in part because of the difficulty in obtaining drugs.
A group of Texas inmates in 2023 unsuccessfully tried to stop the state from using drugs they alleged were expired and unsafe. Prison officials denied their claims and said the state’s drug supply was safe.
Attorneys for Idaho’s death row inmates raised similar concerns in 2024, when the state planned to take a second try at executing Thomas Creech after the first attempt was botched.
The Federal Defender Services of Idaho told a federal judge that prison officials apparently failed to even check the expiration date of the execution drugs before obtaining a death warrant for Creech in October 2024. Nine days later, the drugs were returned to the supplier because they were expired, according to court documents. A new Idaho law has changed the state’s primary execution to firing squad in part because of the difficulty of getting lethal injection drugs.
Tennessee has had problems with execution drugs
Tennessee has a history of problems with its execution drugs. In 2022, Oscar Smith came within minutes of being executed before Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee issued a surprise reprieve that revealed the state’s lethal injection drugs were not being properly tested for purity and potency.
Executions were on hold for two years to allow for an independent investigation into the problems.
The state attorney general’s office was also forced to concede in court that two of the people most responsible for overseeing Tennessee’s lethal injection drugs at the time “incorrectly testified ” under oath that officials were testing the chemicals as required.
Tennessee released a new lethal injection process in December 2024, and restarted executions in 2025. Several death row inmates have sued over the new protocols, arguing that the Correction Department did not follow the recommendations from the investigation.
Meanwhile, the new process has not been completely smooth. When Byron Black was executed by lethal injection in August, he said he was “hurting so bad.” Prison officials have offered no explanation for what might have caused the pain.
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