Tennessee botched the high-profile execution of Tony Carruthers May 21, resulting in Gov. Bill Lee granting the prisoner a one-year reprieve.
The Tennessee Department of Correction said medical personnel were able to insert a primary IV line for the 10 a.m. lethal injunction but were unable to establish the backup line required by protocol.
The execution was then called off.
Carruthers’ American Civil Liberties Union attorneys filed an emergency motion as the attempted execution was taking place to try to stop the procedure. Lee issued the reprieve a short time later, the Nashville Banner reported.
Maria DeLiberato
“This was a tortured, botched execution. I mean, there’s no question about it,” Carruthers’ attorney Maria DeLiberato said. “By the grace of God, he’s still alive. But they tortured him trying to find a vein.”
Executioners spent an hour trying to insert the secondary IV into the left arm, then into his feet, hand, jugular vein and right shoulder, she said. Carruthers, meanwhile, was “in agony.”
“Today’s botched execution attempt of Tony Carruthers is horrifying but not surprising,” said Stacy Rector, executive director of Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.
Stacy Rector
“TADP has sounded the alarm for years about the serious problems with lethal injection and urged our state toward greater transparency so these problems can be addressed.”
The state, in fact, made a powerful case against capital punishment, said Laura Porter, executive director of the U.S. Campaign to End the Death Penalty. “They forced Tony Carruthers to represent himself at his own capital trial, failed to test DNA and fingerprint evidence, and now they have failed to execute him. It is time to end the death penalty.”
Carruthers’ case drew national attention in the weeks leading up to the execution as state and federal courts refused repeated appeals to order DNA testing that could prove his innocence. He was convicted in a 1994 double kidnapping and homicide, but his co-defendant signed a statement affirming Carruthers was not involved in the killings.
Tony Carruthers
Carruthers received a flawed trial because he was ordered by a judge to represent himself after repeatedly firing his defense lawyers, his lawyers said earlier this month. “If Tennessee executes Tony, he will be the first person in nearly a century to be executed after being forced to represent himself at trial.”
In an ACLU statement, DeLiberato said Carruthers’ legal team was relieved Lee issued a reprieve, but said the legal fight will continue.
“Permitting Tony Carruthers’s execution to move forward without ordering DNA testing was already a profound injustice. Today, that injustice became outright barbaric after Mr. Carruthers was subject to a botched execution attempt,” she said.
“We will also continue to push the governor to use this moment to allow the forensic testing that should have happened long ago. Tennessee cannot continue torturing a man while refusing to answer serious questions about his innocence.”
Joia Thornton
Joia Thornton, national director of the Faith Leaders of Color Coalition, condemned Tennessee’s attempt to execute Carruthers despite the lack of DNA evidence and more than 30 years proclaiming his innocence.
“This is how the death penalty system really works — unprofessional, unreliable and inconsistent — even for those seeking justice through this abhorrent, flawed practice. When is enough, enough?”