Tennessee GOP senators seek review of botched execution

A group of Tennessee Republican senators is urging the governor to commission an independent review of a failed execution and correct any problems before the state attempts another execution.

In a demand for “full transparency and accountability” from the Department of Correction, eight GOP senators sent a letter Monday to Gov. Bill Lee requesting that he initiate a review of the botched execution of Tony Von Carruthers on May 21. The letter obtained by the Lookout is signed by Senator Majority Leader Jack Johnson of Franklin, Sen. Ferrell Haile of Gallatin, Sen. Joey Hensley of Hohenwald, Sen. Becky Massey of Knoxville, Sen. Richard Briggs of Knoxville, Sen. Tom Hatcher of Maryville, Sen. Dawn White of Murfreesboro and Sen. Ken Yager of Kingston.

Lee called off Carruthers’ execution when medical personnel failed to find veins for a backup line to administer lethal drugs and a central line as part of the state’s execution protocol. But he has declined to delay other executions, despite requests from death penalty opponents.

“The effort dragged on for well over an hour before the execution was called off. This was a failure of the State of Tennessee to carry a lawful sentence of its own courts,” the letter to Lee says.

The senators want a full accounting of how medical personnel for the execution were selected, including their credentials and qualifications for performing the procedures. 

In addition, before another execution is attempted, the senators want every deficiency identified in a review to be corrected, as well as independent testing of lethal drugs for potency, sterility and contamination, confirmation the drugs aren’t expired and verification that personnel are qualified.

Senators also want test results and personnel qualifications made available to them and the public, “to the fullest extent consistent with law,” to verify the Department of Correction’s ability to perform executions.

“We raise these concerns not in opposition to the death penalty but in defense of it – out of respect for the rule of law, the verdicts of Tennessee juries, and the families still awaiting justice,” the letter says.

The senators’ letter says Tennessee residents are “entitled” to have a Department of Correction capable of carrying out the law and following its own protocol, and it points out the botched execution of Carruthers wasn’t the state’s first failure. Lee stopped the execution of Oscar Smith in the final hour and put a hold on the death penalty in 2022 when a review found the Correction Department failed to follow protocol for handling lethal injection chemicals.

The latest failure raises more questions about the department’s ability for “competently discharging the duties the law has placed in its hands,” the letter says.

Federal public defenders and Carruthers’ attorney say the state’s guidelines, which were adopted under Commissioner Frank Strada, led to poor training and ineptitude that caused Carruthers to suffer through a bloody “torture” in which they cut into his chest twice and considered using his jugular vein after trying his arms, hands and feet, the Lookout reported. Carruthers was convicted of kidnapping and killing three people in 1994 in Memphis.

ACLU attorney Maria DeLiberatoro, who served as a witness, called the poking and cutting of Carruthers “barbaric.”

The defense attorneys want all executions delayed until litigation over the state’s 2025 protocol is finished.

Tennessee governor gives reprieve to inmate after botched execution 

Attorneys for death row inmate Darrell Hines also are requesting the governor grant a reprieve for his execution, set for Aug. 13, until the Correction Department “can demonstrate it is capable of carrying out executions in accordance with the Constitution, state law and its own protocol.”

The attorneys told Lee that Hines suffered multiple strokes that left him severely impaired, partially blind and confined to his bed, unable to move without help. 

Hines, convicted of first-degree murder in 1986, is one of the plaintiffs in the challenge of Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol adopted last year. Along with the litigation, Hines’ attorneys want the Correction Department to confirm whether it plans to use the same doctor involved in the failed Carruthers execution and whether it intends to use expired drugs.