A lethal injection execution in the US state of Tennessee was abandoned after medical staff failed to locate a suitable vein, according to officials.
Tony Carruthers, 57, had been scheduled to be put to death at a prison in Nashville for the 1994 murders of Delois Anderson, her son Marcellos Anderson and Frederick Tucker, reports RTE.
The Tennessee Department of Corrections said medical personnel had successfully placed a primary IV line but were unable to establish a backup line due to a lack of suitable veins.
“The execution was then called off,” the department said in a statement, reports RTE.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee granted Carruthers, who has consistently maintained his innocence, a one-year stay of execution.
Stacy Rector, executive director of Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (TADP), described the incident as a “botched execution attempt” that was “horrifying but not surprising,” reports RTE.
“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,” Ms Rector said, reports RTE.
Carruthers was one of two inmates scheduled for execution in the United States that day.
Richard Knight, 47, was executed by lethal injection at 6.13pm local time in Florida for the murders of a woman and her four-year-old daughter in 2000, reports RTE.
So far this year, 14 executions have been carried out across the United States — seven in Florida, four in Texas, two in Oklahoma and one in Arizona.
There were 47 executions in the country last year, the highest figure since 2009 when 52 people were put to death, reports RTE.
Florida carried out the most executions in 2025 with 19, followed by Alabama, South Carolina and Texas with five each.
Lethal injection was used in 39 of last year’s executions, three were by firing squad and five by nitrogen hypoxia, a method involving nitrogen gas being pumped into a face mask, causing the prisoner to suffocate, reports RTE.
The use of nitrogen gas as a method of execution has been condemned 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, reports RTE.
US President Donald Trump is a strong advocate of capital punishment and has called for its use to be extended to cover “the vilest crimes.”
His Department of Justice stated in April that it is pursuing an expansion of the federal death penalty and the addition of the firing squad, electrocution and gas as execution methods, reports RTE.
Tell us your thoughts in the Facebook post and share this with your friends.
