Gov. Bill Lee (R-TN) delayed the execution of Tony Carruthers by one year after the inmate experienced a “botched” execution on Thursday.Executioners failed to find a vein to insert the mandatory backup IV line per Tennessee‘s lethal injection protocol. Carruthers had been convicted of a triple murder in Memphis in 1994, though advocates had pushed for clemency in the weeks leading up to his execution date.The convict was supposed to be executed at 10 a.m. CT, with the intravenous lines for his execution eventually being removed at 11:52 a.m. The botched insertion caused Carruthers to be in pain as he lost “lots of blood,” one of his public defenders, Amy Harwell, said.
The inmate’s case had experienced increased public scrutiny, as the state had no physical evidence supporting Carruthers’s conviction. The convict has insisted he is innocent since his trial.
This Tennessee Department of Correction photo shows inmate Tony Carruthers. (Tennessee Department of Correction via AP)
Lee initially refused to halt the execution on May 19.
“We know that there is no physical evidence that matches Tony,” said Lucas Cameron-Vaughn, interim legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee. “Investigators recovered fingerprints from the home where the victims were kidnapped. … None of those fingerprints match Tony.”
