TN Governor Bill Lee issued a temporary one-year reprieve after the failed execution of death row inmate Tony Carruthers Thursday morning due to medical complications.
According to the Tennessee Department of Corrections, medical personnel found a primary IV line for Carruthers’ lethal injection, but they could not find a vein for a “backup line,” which is standard lethal injection protocol in Tennessee.
Carruthers has been on death row for 30 years after being convicted in connection to a kidnapping and murder case in Memphis in 1996.
Carruthers’ loved ones consider this botched execution and reprieve by Bill Lee an act of “divine intervention,” one which they hope to use to continue to try to prove Carruthers’ innocence.
