Tennessee called off Tony Carruthers’ scheduled execution on Thursday after staff could not find a suitable second vein for the lethal injection protocol, stopping the process after a medical attempt to carry out the execution had already begun. Governor Bill Lee said he would grant Carruthers a temporary reprieve from execution for one year.
The Tennessee Department of Corrections said its medical team found a primary IV line and then tried to insert a central line pursuant to the protocol, but the procedure was unsuccessful. The department said the team continued to follow the protocol, but could not find another suitable vein. Carruthers had been scheduled to die Thursday in Tennessee for the 1996 kidnapping and murders of Marcellos Anderson, Delois Anderson and Frederick Tucker, three people who were beaten and shot and buried alive in a Memphis cemetery.
The last-minute halt added another turn to a case that has drawn national attention for years. Carruthers’ case has been pressed by advocates who say there were serious problems at trial, including the ACLU’s claim that he was forced to represent himself. The group said his trial was riddled with errors, that he was denied legal counsel and that there was no physical evidence linked to him. Advocates also sought fingerprint and DNA testing before the execution, while Kim Kardashian urged people to contact the governor’s office about the case before it was too late.
Pressure had been building in the days before Thursday’s scheduled execution. On Monday, advocates and community groups delivered more than 130,000 signatures to the governor’s office at the Tennessee capitol. A day later, Lee said the execution would go forward as planned. Then on Wednesday, Carruthers’ attorneys filed a clemency petition arguing that his current mental state made him too impaired to be executed.
The case now shifts from an immediate execution fight to a yearlong pause ordered by the governor. That reprieve does not resolve the arguments over Carruthers’ conviction, but it does ensure Tennessee will not carry out the death sentence on Thursday, after a failed procedure ended the execution before it could happen.
