Death Penalty News

Dr. Mark Fowler assisted in the failed execution of a Tennessee prisoner. Physicians are meant to heal patients—why is he working in the death chamber? Mark Fowler, a physician with 25 years’ experience, stepped beneath the bright lights and approached the middle-aged man lying on a gurney. Around him, people in medical gowns prepared needles and sterile tubing. It had all the appearances of a hospital setting. Fowler had been called in to help establish an IV line through which the 57-year-old man, Tony Carruthers, would be injected with pharmaceutical drugs. The team had struggled to find a vein, so Fowler was summoned to set a central line—an intravenous catheter inserted into the major vein below the collarbone.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WZTV) — The Tennessee Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected a request by a death row inmate to force state corrections officials to disclose whether the same physician involved in a failed execution attempt in May will be used when he is scheduled to be put to death on Aug. 13. The court rejected a legal request filed by attorneys for Darrell Hines, a death row inmate scheduled to be executed on Aug. 13, 2026. PREVIOUS COVERAGE | Tenn. court orders disclosure of execution physician identity in upcoming 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.

"Death Row Doctor," an eight-minute film that touches on themes of justice and injustice, life and death, profiles Carlo Musso. He is a doctor who contemplates his moral compass as he participates in executions, even though he personally opposes capital punishment. Source: The New York Times, Caroline Crosson Gilpin, March 15, 2018 ⚑ | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com . Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE! "One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

Known as Team Member 18, the now-former executioner testified in March in an ongoing federal case brought by Ohio death-row inmates. Separately, a state lawyer's legal opinion requested by the office that oversees EMTs said Wednesday that the state cannot stop emergency medical technicians from serving as members of Ohio's execution team. "I have had to deal with death and dying on a daily basis as a paramedic," Team Member 18 testified. He said the state never trained him in the use or makeup of the lethal drugs used in executions. Instead, he relied on his EMT experience when trying to figure out if the first drug had put a death row inmate to sleep. "Thirty years of experience in monitoring patients," he testified. "Watching for vital sign changes, watching for movement changes, just watching the person as I would if it was a person in my care* ." He said he didn't keep a tally of executions and couldn't always remember individ...

Since 1977, when the U.S. Supreme Court legalized executions after a five-year pause, more than a thousand people have been killed. The messiness of hanging, firing squads, electrocution and gas has limited the use of those methods, leaving lethal injection as the only acceptable option. To be certain that this method is used satisfactorily, some courts or legislatures have decided that physicians must be available to assure proper procedure: that the intravenous lines are in place, that the correct doses of appropriate drugs are given and that the prisoner is actually dead. Thus, executions have become increasingly "medicalized." In April 2006, a group of us doctors wrote to the N.C. Medical Board pointing out that state law required physicians be "present" at executions but that, in reality, physicians were almost always "participating" in executions, taking actions contrary to AMA ethical guidelines as well as to the oath of Hippocrates that physicians ...