Entries tagged with “Gary Sutton”

Upcoming Executions

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Jul 13, 2026

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee Says Lethal Injection Executions Will Proceed as Scheduled, Despite Recent Botch and Mounting Concerns

On July 7, 2026, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee told mem­bers of the media that the state’s sched­uled exe­cu­tions will pro­ceed with­out any changes to the lethal injec­tion pro­to­col, despite the state’s failed attempt to exe­cute Tony Carruthers in May. Gov. Lee stat­ed that the exe­cu­tion team fol­lowed the prop­er pro­to­col dur­ing the attempt­ed exe­cu­tion and that the prob­lem was with locat­ing a suit­able vein for an IV line, rather than with the pro­to­col itself.​“I think, as we…

Botched Executions

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Jul 07, 2026

Tennessee Republican State Senators Call on Governor Lee to Review the ​“Incompetent Administration” Leading to the Botched Execution of Tony Carruthers

In a let­ter dat­ed June 25, 2026, a group of nine Tennessee Republican sen­a­tors called on Governor Bill Lee to com­mis­sion an inde­pen­dent review of the failed exe­cu­tion of Tony Carruthers, to order the cor­rec­tion of​“every defi­cien­cy” found in this review, and to make infor­ma­tion about the exe­cu­tion team pub­licly avail­able​“so that the Department \[of Corrections’\] readi­ness can be inde­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fied.” While the sen­a­tors main­tain their sup­port for the…

Botched Executions

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May 26, 2026

Tennessee’s Botched Execution of Tony Carruthers Raises Questions About Medical Qualifications Among Concerns with Innocence and Due Process

Tennessee​’s attempt to exe­cute Tony Carruthers on May 21, 2026, failed after exe­cu­tion team mem­bers could not estab­lish an intra­venous line after more than an hour of attempts, prompt­ing Governor Bill Lee to grant a one-year reprieve. In a writ­ten state­ment, the Tennessee Department of Corrections said med­ical per­son­nel had quick­ly estab­lished a pri­ma­ry IV line but were unable to estab­lish a back­up line as required by the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col. Efforts to…

Executions

Upcoming Executions

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Mar 05, 2022

Tennessee Sets Three Execution Dates for Most-in-Nation 5 Pending Executions in 2022

The Tennessee Supreme Court has issued death war­rants set­ting exe­cu­tion dates for three pris­on­ers, bring­ing to five — the nation’s‑high — the num­ber of exe­cu­tions pend­ing in the state in 2022. On February 22, 2022, the court set exe­cu­tion dates of August 18 for Byron Black, October 6 for Gary Sutton, and December 8 for Donald Middlebrooks. The court had pre­vi­ous­ly set exe­cu­tion dates of April 21 for…