Tennessee attorneys question use of expired execution drugs

Attorneys for Tennessee death row inmate Tony Carruthers say they are concerned the state may use expired lethal injection drugs at his scheduled execution on Thursday. The attorneys twice asked the Tennessee Department of Correction last month whether it had secured appropriate drugs and whether those drugs had expired.

Assistant Attorney General John W. Ayers responded that the department would comply with its lethal injection protocol, which includes regular inventory checks for expiration dates. The Tennessee Department of Correction declined to answer on Wednesday when asked by The Associated Press whether the drugs planned for Carruthers are expired.

Gov. Bill Lee’s office did not immediately respond to a similar inquiry.

Carruthers, 57, was sentenced to death after being found guilty of the 1994 kidnappings and murders of Marcellos Anderson, his mother Delois Anderson, and Frederick Tucker. Federal Public Defender Amy Harwell said expiration dates reflect when a drug can no longer be safely relied upon to obtain the desired result.

In the execution context, she wrote, this may mean a slow, lingering death without a reliable loss of consciousness.

Public opposition to executions has made it difficult for prisons to obtain execution drugs. In South Carolina, executions were on hold for 12 years while the state struggled to obtain drugs and eventually passed a shield law to keep supplier identities secret.

In 2017, Arkansas executed four inmates before a batch of lethal injection drugs expired and has not carried out any executions since. A group of Texas inmates in 2023 unsuccessfully tried to stop the state from using drugs they alleged were expired.

Tennessee has a history of problems with its execution drugs. In 2022, Oscar Smith came within minutes of being executed before Gov. Bill Lee issued a reprieve after an investigation found the state's lethal injection drugs were not being properly tested for purity and potency.

When Byron Black was executed by lethal injection in August, he said he was hurting so badly. Prison officials have offered no explanation for what might have caused the pain.