Tennessee State Senator Tom Hatcher (R-Blount County) led eight of his colleagues, including Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson (R-Franklin), in a letter sent to Governor Bill Lee, asking him to authorize an independent investigation to determine why Tennessee failed to execute Tony Carruthers under the lethal injection protocol the state adopted in 2024.
Notably written by proponents of the death penalty in Tennessee, Hatcher told Lee that he and his colleagues wrote to express “serious concern” over the failed execution of Carruthers (pictured above), who a jury sentenced to death for the kidnapping and murder of three people in Memphis in 1994.
Originally sentenced in April 1996, Carruthers’ execution was delayed by Lee’s 2022 decision to pause all executions in Tennessee while the state completed a review of its lethal injection protocol. Once the new protocol was determined last year, Carruthers was then scheduled to be executed on May 21, but the physician assigned to perform the lethal injection failed to complete the procedure.
According to the letter sent last Thursday, the Tennessee Department of Correction acknowledges, “the execution team at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution set a primary intravenous line but could not establish the backup line its protocol requires, could not locate another suitable vein, and failed in an attempt to place a central line.”
Describing the episode as a “failure” on behalf of Tennessee to carry out “a lawful sentence of its own courts,” the senators wrote, “the effort dragged on for well over an hour before the execution was called off.”
After Tennessee failed to execute the convicted murderer, Lee granted Carruthers a one-year reprieve from execution.
Writing in support of “the lawful administration of the death penalty,” the state senators asked Lee to commission an independent review of the failed execution of Carruthers, including determining whether the involved medical personnel were trained and credentialed to complete the task, and to complete independent testing of the state’s execution protocol before the next execution. The letter also asked Lee to make the results available for inspection by the State Senate upon completion.
In addition to Hatcher and Johnson, the letter was signed by State Senators Becky Massey (R-Knoxville), Ken Yager (R-Kingston), Paul Bailey (R-Sparta), Dawn White (R-Murfreesboro), Joey Hensley (R-Hohenwald), Richard Briggs (R-Knoxville), and Ferrell Haile (R-Gallatin).
Nine death-row inmates successfully obtained a ruling in Davidson County Chancery Court last month that requires state officials to preserve the materials used during the botched execution of Carruthers as part of a lawsuit claiming Tennessee’s 2025 lethal injection protocol results in a death “not simply painful or uncomfortable,” but involving “a sensation of suffocating or drowning that has been likened by experts to the sensation intentionally induced by the practice of waterboarding.”
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Tom Pappert is a 2025 recipient of the Dao Prize and the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star. He also reports for the Star News Network. Follow Tom on X. Email tips to [email protected].
