Attorneys for Tennessee death row inmate Tony Carruthers have raised concerns that the state may plan to use expired lethal injection drugs at his execution, pointing to the state's refusal to offer assurances it provided to a previously executed inmate.
A jury convicted Carruthers, now 57, on charges stemming from the 1994 kidnappings and killings of Marcellos Anderson, Delois Anderson — Marcellos's mother — and Frederick Tucker, for which he received a death sentence. Last month, his legal team sent two separate inquiries to the Tennessee Department of Correction asking for confirmation that the state had obtained suitable, unexpired drugs ahead of the scheduled execution, according to CNN. The response from Assistant Attorney General John W. Ayers sidestepped the question, saying only that the department would follow its lethal injection protocol — a document that calls for regular drug inventory checks to track expiration dates.
According to CNN, Federal Public Defender Amy Harwell pointed to proceedings surrounding the December execution of Harold Nichols, in which Tennessee Deputy Attorney General Cody Brandon voluntarily offered to submit a declaration guaranteeing the chemicals were not expired and would not expire before the execution was carried out. The state made no equivalent offer to Carruthers' legal team. "The fact that TDOC was willing to provide such assurances to Mr. Nichols, but not Mr. Carruthers, raises serious concerns that TDOC is, in fact, intending to use expired drugs," Harwell wrote in a May 18 letter.
Questions put to both the Tennessee Department of Correction and the office of Gov. Bill Lee about the status of the execution drugs went unanswered, according to CNN.
In her letter, Harwell explained that an expiration date marks the threshold beyond which a drug's ability to achieve its intended effect can no longer be guaranteed. "In the execution context, this may mean a slow, lingering death without a reliable loss of consciousness, as the body painfully and fitfully shuts down," she wrote.
Tennessee has a documented history of problems with its execution drugs. When Oscar Smith was within roughly an hour of his scheduled execution in April 2022, Gov. Lee intervened with a surprise reprieve after it came to light that the lethal injection chemicals had not undergone mandatory bacterial contamination testing, according to The Associated Press. An independent review that followed determined that Tennessee had been out of compliance with its own lethal injection procedures going back to 2018, and the attorney general's office was subsequently forced to acknowledge in court that two individuals with direct oversight of the execution drugs had given false sworn testimony claiming the chemicals were being properly tested, as detailed in a filing linked to this AP report.
According to the AP, a revised lethal injection protocol was issued by Tennessee in December 2024, paving the way for executions to resume the following year. The updated procedure has since drawn legal challenges from multiple death row inmates. The August lethal injection execution of Byron Black raised additional concerns when Black was heard saying he was "hurting so bad," a complaint that state prison officials have since left unexplained, according to CNN.
Difficulty obtaining execution drugs has affected multiple states. Suppliers and pharmacies have broadly refused to provide drugs for executions, forcing states including Arkansas, Idaho, and South Carolina to confront shortages or halt executions entirely. Lethal injections in South Carolina did not resume until the state enacted a shield law that bars public disclosure of supplier identities. In court filings, Tennessee has taken the position that its shield law permits the state to refuse disclosure of drug expiration dates as well.