Tennessee | Death row inmate seeks replacement of physician in charge of botched execution

A death row inmate is asking the Tennessee Supreme Court to replace the physician in charge of a botched execution in May or appoint a special master to consider his claim that a scheduled Aug. 13 execution could be unconstitutional.

In a Monday Chancery Court filing, attorneys for inmate Darrell Hines cited the risk of extreme pain and suffering if the state uses the same doctor who was in charge when the state tried and failed to execute Tony Carruthers in May. The move comes after a Davidson County judge required the Department of Correction to reveal whether the same physician will perform Hines’ lethal injection.

Chancellor Russell Perkins granted the request of Hines’ attorneys, compelling the Department of Correction to disclose whether Dr. Mark Fowler will oversee Hines’ execution after they argued that his lack of medical skills contributed to the failed execution of Carruthers and could cause Hines to suffer through a similar botched procedure, according to a release from Hines’ legal team. Carruthers is on death row for a triple murder.

“It’s unconscionable that TDOC continues to withhold this information,” said Hines’ attorney, Kit Thomas.

The state has claimed a secrecy law enables it to conceal the physician’s identity and whether it plans to use Fowler, even though it has publicly disclosed his name, according to the release.

The physician tried for more than an hour to insert backup and central intravenous lines on Carruthers, as required by protocol, before Gov. Bill Lee called off the execution and postponed it for a year. Witnesses called it a bloody “torture.”

Attorneys for Hines, who is convicted of the 1985 rape and murder of motel maid Catherine Jenkins in Kingston Springs, point out that Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol requires the execution physician to be able to insert a central line but that Fowler acknowledged in a court document he had performed the procedure about 12 times in an emergency room but not since 2013 and doesn’t have privileges to conduct one at any hospital.

Lee declined to postpone the Hines execution and two others set for this year even though a group of Republican senators urged him to commission an independent review of the botched execution and correct any problems before the state attempts another one.

Source: tennesseelookout.com, Sam Stockard, July 21, 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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