Tennessee Calls Off Execution After Botched Lethal Injection
On May 21, 2026, the state Department of Corrections (DOC) said that it had called off the execution of prisoner Tony Carruthers, 57, after the executioners were unable to find a “suitable vein” to administer lethal injection drugs.
While Carruthers was constrained in a gurney in the execution chamber at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, prison staff spent more than half an hour attempting to insert a backup IV line into him that would allow the execution to proceed, the Nashville Banner reported. When this failed, the doctor asked a staff member to insert a line through Carruthers’ jugular vein—a last resort according to the state’s lethal injection protocol—before deciding to attempt inserting the IV into the condemned prisoner’s chest.
As this chaotic scene unfolded, Carruthers’ attorneys filed an emergency motion with the state Supreme Court to stop the execution. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R), however, intervened before the Court could rule and delayed the execution for a year. In a subsequent federal court filing, public defenders representing Carruthers named the doctor as Mark Walton Fowler and claimed that he is unqualified.
“Most medical professionals do not participate in lethal injections because it violates their ethical obligation ‘to do no harm,’” Assistant Federal Public Defender Amy Harwell said in a statement. “As such, states with the death penalty are left with no choice but to scrape the bottom of the barrel—hiring individuals with inadequate training and minimal conscience.”
Bolstering this claim, a witness to Carruthers would-be execution described seeing Fowler’s hands shaking as he tried to insert an IV into the prisoner’s chest. The witness also said they saw blood coming from various puncture wounds on Carruthers—and that, despite Fowler administering a local anesthetic on Carruthers, he was in “agony” and groaning in pain.
In the weeks following the botched execution, lawmakers in Tennessee, including Republican state Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson, have called for Gov. Lee to pause executions until a commission investigates what led to the failure. Lee had previously placed a moratorium on executions earlier in his term in May 2022 (the state began executing people again in May 2025).
According to reporting from the Nashville Banner and the Nashville Scene, the lethal injection protocol adopted by Tennessee in 2025 reduced training in IV placement. Carruthers would have been the fourth prisoner executed under the new protocol.
Sources: Nashville Banner, Nashville Scene, The Tennessean
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