WASHINGTON – The execution by lethal injection of an inmate in the US state of Tennessee was halted on May 21 after medical staff were unable to tap a vein, officials said.
Tony Carruthers, 57, was scheduled to be put to death at a prison in Nashville for the 1994 murders of Ms Delois Anderson, her son Marcellos Anderson, and Mr Frederick Tucker.
The Tennessee Department of Corrections said medical personnel established a primary IV line to deliver the lethal drugs but could not find a suitable vein for a backup line.
“The execution was then called off,” the department said in a statement.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee granted Carruthers, who has maintained his innocence, a one-year reprieve from execution.
Ms Stacy Rector, executive director of Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (TADP), said the “botched execution attempt of Tony Carruthers is horrifying but not surprising”.
“TADP has sounded the alarm for years about the serious problems with lethal injection and urged our state toward greater transparency so these problems can be addressed,” she said.
Carruthers was one of two inmates scheduled to be executed in the United States on May 21.
Richard Knight, 47, was put to death by lethal injection at 6.13pm local time in Florida for the murders of a woman and her four-year-old daughter in 2000.
Fourteen executions have been carried out in the United States in 2026 – seven in Florida, four in Texas, two in Oklahoma and one in Arizona.
There were 47 executions in the country in 2025, the most since 2009, when 52 people were put to death.
Florida carried out the most executions in 2025, with 19, followed by Alabama, South Carolina and Texas, where there were five each.
Thirty-nine of the 2026 executions were carried out by lethal injection.
Three were by firing squad and five by nitrogen hypoxia, which involves pumping nitrogen gas into a face mask, causing the prisoner to suffocate.
The use of nitrogen gas as a method of capital punishment has been denounced by United Nations experts as cruel and inhumane.
The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while three others – California, Oregon and Pennsylvania – have moratoriums in place.
US President Donald Trump is a proponent of capital punishment and has called for an expansion of its use “for the vilest crimes.”
The Trump Justice Department said in April that it is seeking to expand the use of the death penalty in federal capital cases and add the firing squad, electrocution and gas as methods of execution. AFP