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 lawyer said, after 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,” attorney Maria DeLiberato said, in a text message obtained by CBS News through the American Civil Liberties Union. “When they tried to do the central line, they injected a dose of lidocaine into his chest and he told them he could still feel the sting and they did it anyway.”
In the text, DeLiberato said Carruthers, 57, was groaning and bleeding from his injection attempts. She said officers tried three times to establish the line between the inmate’s arms and feet and also tried to access a vein in his neck.
Carruthers’ defense team had asked a Tennessee district court judge to stop his execution under an emergency order, alleging the repeated attempts “constituted cruel and unusual punishment” and violated his constitutional rights. The judge rejected the request on the grounds that his team had not met its burden of proof to demonstrate that the state’s actions were “cruel and unusual.”
Although Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee issued a stay, suspending execution proceedings, it was unclear whether it would be temporary or permanent, according to an ACLU spokesperson.
Lee upheld the state’s death sentence against Carruthers in a statement responding to his clemency request Thursday.
“After careful consideration of Tony Von Carruthers’ request for clemency and after a thorough review of the case, I uphold the sentence of the State of Tennessee,” the governor said.
Carruthers was sentenced to death after being convicted of the 1994 kidnappings and murders of Marcellos Anderson; his mother, Delois Anderson; and Frederic Tucker.
But advocates have long asked Lee to halt Carruthers’ execution so his legal team can more thoroughly evaluate DNA evidence that they say could exonerate him. Throughout his 30 years on Tennessee’s death row, Carruthers maintained his innocence.
In statements released Thursday alongside the emergency motion, Carruthers’ attorneys described the state’s decision to carry out the execution despite blocking his efforts to conduct forensic analysis as “a grave injustice.” His defense team’s request to conduct “post-conviction” DNA testing on evidence collected from the victims was denied by the state, according to court documents.
“This injustice became barbaric when Tennessee’s efforts to establish an IV line for deadly drugs failed and the executioners still moved forward with a botched execution,” said attorney and director of the Capital Punishment Project, Cassy Stubbs.
The ACLU, in a petition, accused Tennessee leaders of neglecting to address problems related to the Carruthers case. He said his conviction was based on the testimony of “paid prison informants” and that no physical evidence links him to the crime.
Post-conviction forensic testing aimed to evaluate “unmatched fingerprints and DNA from the crime scene,” which “were never matched” to another suspect identified by Carruthers’ co-defendant more than a decade ago, according to the ACLU.
