Tennessee Halts Tony Carruthers Execution for 1 Year After IV Team Fails to Set Backup Line
Updated
Updated · Fox News · May 21
Tennessee Halts Tony Carruthers Execution for 1 Year After IV Team Fails to Set Backup Line
18 articles · Updated · Fox News · May 21
More than an hour of failed attempts to place a required backup IV led Tennessee to stop Tony Carruthers’ execution, after staff also failed to insert a central line.
Gov. Bill Lee then granted a reprieve barring another execution attempt for at least a year under the state’s lethal-injection protocol.
Maria DeLiberato, Carruthers’ lawyer, said he was “wincing and groaning” during the vein-search and called the scene horrible to watch.
Carruthers was sentenced to death for the 1994 kidnapping and murders of three people in Memphis, but his current lawyers say no physical evidence tied him to the killings.
His defense has also argued he was incompetent to be executed and that key trial claims later unraveled, including testimony that the victims were buried alive.
A failed injection halted his execution. Will the state now test the DNA that could prove his innocence?
When an execution is stopped by a vein, is it a sign the entire capital punishment system is broken?