On May 21, Tennessee strapped Tony Carruthers to a gurney and began the lethal injection process. Hours later, guards returned him to a holding cell. The execution had failed, and Carruthers lived to face an uncertain future.
He joined a small and grim club: the ninth person in 80 years to survive an execution attempt in the United States. But unlike most others in that group, Carruthers did not die during the ordeal. The question now is whether Tennessee will try again.
The case against Carruthers carries deep flaws that should trouble anyone concerned with justice. He was convicted in 1994 of kidnapping and murdering Marcellos Anderson, his mother Delois Anderson, and Frederick Tucker. But the prosecution offered no fingerprints, no physical evidence tying him to the crime. A DNA sample that Carruthers claims would exonerate him went untested. The conviction rested almost entirely on testimony from witnesses who said they heard him confess, including a jailhouse informant.
Carruthers represented himself at trial after becoming frustrated with his court-appointed lawyers. Court records show mental health issues complicated his defense. The judge deemed his behavior willful, and the Tennessee Supreme Court upheld that view. Still, the weaknesses in the evidence should have given officials pause. About 130,000 people signed a petition asking Governor Bill Lee to halt the execution and allow DNA testing or to grant clemency. Lee refused. Tennessee proceeded anyway.
What unfolded in the execution chamber proved nightmarish. According to Carruthers's attorney, Maria DeLiberato of the American Civil Liberties Union, execution staff spent hours hunting for suitable veins to insert IV lines required for the lethal drugs. Media witnesses sat in darkness for more than an hour as the state prevented them from observing the needle insertion process under Tennessee law. DeLiberato heard Carruthers groaning and wincing through the walls. When she finally saw him, she counted multiple puncture wounds and blood pooling on his body.
The Tennessee Department of Corrections confirmed the execution team could not locate a second vein after establishing the primary line, which protocol requires. Attempts to access a central vein failed, and officials called off the execution.
Governor Lee granted Carruthers a one-year reprieve. But that reprieve, advocates say, is not justice. Tennessee should abandon any plan to execute him again.
The legal framework allowing second execution attempts traces back to 1947, when the state of Louisiana failed to electrocute a Black teenager named Willie Francis. Francis sued, arguing that a second attempt would violate constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment. The U.S. Supreme Court disagreed. Justice Stanley Reed wrote that an accidental failure to complete execution does not add an element of cruelty to a subsequent attempt. The court gave states broad permission to retry executions after failures.
That ruling has haunted America's death penalty ever since. Most botched executions have occurred since 2009, mostly involving lethal injection in Alabama, Idaho, Ohio, and now Tennessee. Courts citing the Francis decision have consistently allowed states another chance despite the documented suffering of execution survivors.
One court even ruled that lethal injection does not technically begin until the drugs start flowing, meaning the painful process of vein access is not considered part of the punishment itself. Survivors of failed executions would likely dispute that logic.
Only one other execution survivor from the modern era remains alive: Thomas Creech. The rest either endured second executions, died in prison, or made deals with the state to avoid another attempt. Carruthers now faces that same uncertain path.
Justice Harold Burton dissented in the Francis case with prescient language. He asked how many deliberate reapplications of an execution method it takes to become unconstitutional. His answer: two. He argued that once the state attempts execution and fails, the government has a duty to ensure success on the first try. A second intentional effort to end someone's life, after the first failed deliberately, crosses into cruel and unusual punishment.
Burton's view never prevailed, but it offers the clearest path forward in Carruthers's case. The state had its opportunity. The execution failed through no fault of the condemned man. Tennessee should not be granted a second chance to subject Carruthers to the trauma he endured in May, especially with so many questions lingering about his guilt.
Author James Rodriguez: "The machinery of capital punishment failed once in Tennessee, and that failure should be final. Any second attempt would be pointless cruelty masquerading as justice."
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