Tennessee Abandoned an Execution Last Month, But Three More Are Still Scheduled This Year

Gov. Bill Lee has not responded to calls for a death penalty pause after the failed lethal injection of Tony Carruthers

It has been just over a month since executioners in Nashville abandoned the lethal injection of Tony Carruthers, who was strapped to a gurney for more than an hour as they tried and failed to place a secondary IV line. But while Gov. Bill Lee quickly granted Carruthers a one-year reprieve, his administration has not responded to urgent calls for a pause on the state’s death penalty.

Three more death row prisoners, including the state’s only condemned woman, are still scheduled to be executed this year: Darrell Hines on Aug. 13, Christa Pike on Sept. 30 and Gary Sutton on Dec. 3. The governor’s office did not respond to the Banner’s request for a comment on the status of those executions.

State officials have also remained silent in the face of questions about Dr. Mark Fowler, who attempted to establish a central IV line in Carruthers despite not having performed the procedure in 13 years.

Carruthers’ reprieve means he won’t see the execution chamber again until at least next year, effectively putting his case on the desk of Tennessee’s next governor. Earlier this year, courts up to and including the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his defense team’s efforts to have his execution blocked on mental competency grounds or to secure DNA analysis they said could prove his long-maintained innocence.

In the wake of what his attorneys described as a “barbaric” failed execution, they filed motions in federal court seeking an independent medical examination of Carruthers and the preservation of evidence from his aborted execution. They also asked the court to block the state from executing Carruthers “through intravenous methods unless performed by an individual established on the record to be qualified, licensed, and presently authorized by a legitimate medical facility to establish a central IV line” and to ensure that prison officials be required to allow a “physician designated by Mr. Carruthers to observe the execution.” Judge Eli Richardson has not yet ruled on those issues.

At the same time, a Davidson County Chancery Court Judge Russell Perkins — who is presiding over an ongoing case over the state’s lethal injection protocol brought by another group of death row prisoners — granted a request to preserve evidence from the execution.

The failed execution last month could lead to new litigation on Carruthers’ behalf and Maria DeLiberato, the American Civil Liberties Union who was by his side in the execution chamber, has said she will continue fighting for DNA testing in the case.

Federal public defenders representing Hines — who is a plaintiff in the challenge against the lethal injection protocol — sent a letter on Monday asking the governor to call off his execution because of the “intolerable risk” that it “will be yet another gruesome spectacle. They wrote that Hines — who was sentenced to death in 1986 for the stabbing death of Katherine Jean Jenkins, who was working as a maid at a motel in Kingston Springs — suffered a series of strokes in December and January, which left him unable to see out of his left eye or move his left arm, hand or leg.

“He has major neurological and cognitive impairments,” the letter reads. “He is in constant pain. The prospect of executing such a profoundly disabled individual is horrifying.”

Earlier this month, attorneys representing Pike filed a motion with the Tennessee Supreme Court arguing that an attempt to execute her by lethal injection would also be prolonged and torturous. Pike was jailed at the age of 18 and sentenced to death for the 1996 murder of Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville.

Her attorneys have emphasized the traumatic effects of rape and abuse from her childhood, as well as the 27 years she spent in effective solitary confinement as the only woman on Tennessee’s death row. Beyond that, they told the court that Pike’s medical condition has historically made it difficult for doctors to find suitable veins for blood draws and that her thrombocytosis could lead to her essentially drowning in her own blood during a lethal injection.

In the case of Sutton — who was sentenced to death, along with his uncle, James Dellinger, for the 1992 murders of Tommy Griffin and Griffin’s sister Connie Branam — long-held innocence claims and questions about his prosecution exist alongside an intellectual disability claim. Sutton’s supporters gathered outside the Blount County Courthouse last month to ask the governor to intervene in his case. He had originally been scheduled for a hearing on his intellectual disability claim, which could render him ineligible for the death penalty. But that hearing was stayed by an appeals court as the state seeks to block it.

Had Carruthers’ lethal injection been completed, Tennessee would have become one of only five states to carry out an execution in 2026. After going without an execution from 2009 to 2018, Tennessee has killed 10 death row prisoners since.

Source: nashvillebanner.com, Steven Hale, June 23, 2026

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."
— Oscar Wilde

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