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 have observed, every­thing about the pro­to­col of the death penal­ty in the state was car­ried out appro­pri­ate­ly… In that sit­u­a­tion, the Department of Corrections did exact­ly what they were sup­posed to.” Gov. Lee not­ed that he alone made the deci­sion to call off Mr. Carruthers’ exe­cu­tion. ​“Given the cir­cum­stances of not being able to find a vein, I made that deci­sion.” He not­ed the pro­to­col will stand as it is cur­rent­ly writ­ten and the failed attempt to exe­cute Mr. Carruthers ​“should not affect exe­cu­tions in the future.” In the weeks since Mr. Carruthers’ attempt­ed exe­cu­tion, a group of Republican state sen­a­tors, as well as attor­neys for Mr. Carruthers and oth­er death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers, have called for a review of the state’s execution protocol.

On May 21, 2026, Tennessee attempt­ed to exe­cute Tony Carruthers but failed to do so after exe­cu­tion team mem­bers could not estab­lish an IV line fol­low­ing more than an hour of attempts, prompt­ing Gov. Lee to halt the exe­cu­tion and issue a one-year reprieve. In a writ­ten state­ment, the Tennessee Department of Corrections (TDOC) said med­ical per­son­nel had quick­ly estab­lished a pri­ma­ry IV line but were unable to estab­lish a back­up line as required by the state’s pro­to­col. Following the state’s botched attempt to exe­cute Mr. Carruthers, his coun­sel named Dr. Mark Walton Fowler as the physi­cian respon­si­ble for estab­lish­ing IV access and alleged he had not placed a cen­tral line in over a decade before attempt­ing to do so dur­ing the execution.

In a let­ter dat­ed June 25, 2026, a group of Tennessee Republican sen­a­tors called on Gov. Lee to com­mis­sion an inde­pen­dent review of the failed exe­cu­tion of Mr. 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.” The sen­a­tors main­tained their sup­port for the death penal­ty but not­ed they ​“can­not accept its incom­pe­tent admin­is­tra­tion” and that Mr. Carruthers’ failed exe­cu­tion attempt ​“was a fail­ure of the State of Tennessee to car­ry out a law­ful sen­tence of its own courts.” A 2022 inde­pen­dent review, com­mis­sioned by Gov. Lee after prob­lems arose in the prepa­ra­tions for the exe­cu­tion of Oscar Smith, found that the state repeat­ed­ly failed to fol­low its own pro­to­cols in prepar­ing for and per­form­ing eight exe­cu­tions between 2018 and 2022. The let­ter to Gov. Lee notes that the same ques­tion that prompt­ed this review per­sists today: ​“whether the Department is com­pe­tent­ly dis­charg­ing the duties the law has placed in its hands.”

Despite calls from law­mak­ers and coun­sel for sev­er­al death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers, Gov. Lee has made clear he has no inten­tion of delay­ing the three remain­ing sched­uled exe­cu­tions in 2026: Anthony ​“Darrell” Hines (August 13), Christa Pike (September 30), and Gary Wayne Sutton (December 3). ​“The pro­to­col itself and the process for the death penal­ty in this state, which is the law of Tennessee that the peo­ple have decid­ed — the pro­to­col itself still stands as it should,” said Gov. Lee. ​“Those vic­tims of the most heinous crimes in our state deserve to have jus­tice there. The peo­ple in Tennessee have spo­ken about it.” 

Attorneys for Mr. Hines, the next pris­on­er sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed, have asked TDOC whether Dr. Fowler will again be respon­si­ble for set­ting IV lines dur­ing Mr. Hines’ exe­cu­tion. TDOC refused to say whether Dr. Fowler, who lacks hos­pi­tal priv­i­leges and last set a cen­tral line more than a decade ago, will be the exe­cu­tion physi­cian for the state’s August 13 sched­uled exe­cu­tion of Mr. Hines. Following Mr. Carruthers’ failed exe­cu­tion, coun­sel for Mr. Hines called on Gov. Lee in a let­ter to grant him a reprieve based on Tennessee’s per­ceived inabil­i­ty to ​“car­ry out exe­cu­tions in accor­dance with the Constitution, state law and its own pro­to­cols.” Their request also out­lined Mr. Hines’ med­ical con­di­tions. He has suf­fered mul­ti­ple strokes that have left him par­tial­ly blind and con­fined to his bed, unable to move with­out assis­tance. Following TDOC’s refusal to dis­close Dr. Fowler’s poten­tial par­tic­i­pa­tion, cit­ing the state’s secre­cy statutes as pre­clud­ing it from shar­ing this infor­ma­tion, coun­sel for Mr. Hines renewed their request for Gov. Lee to grant a reprieve ​“until the Tennessee courts ful­ly con­sid­er the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the 2025 Lethal Injection Protocol, includ­ing its relat­ed poli­cies and prac­tices regard­ing selec­tion and reten­tion of execution personnel.”

Mr. Hines is among nine pris­on­ers who in 2025 filed a law­suit chal­leng­ing Tennessee’s lethal injec­tion exe­cu­tion pro­to­col based on con­sti­tu­tion­al con­cerns. This suit remains pend­ing in Davidson County Chancery Court. In a depo­si­tion relat­ed to this suit, Dr. Fowler stat­ed he last placed a cen­tral IV line around 2013, when he worked in an emer­gency room, and that he placed a dozen or more cen­tral lines dur­ing his career — one of which erro­neous­ly end­ed with a guide wire in the patient’s carotid vein. Dr. Fowler, dur­ing this depo­si­tion, con­firmed that he has no cur­rent hos­pi­tal priv­i­leges, mean­ing no hos­pi­tal has autho­rized him to prac­tice or per­form pro­ce­dures at its facil­i­ty. TDOC’s refusal to give infor­ma­tion about who will par­tic­i­pate in Mr. Hines’ exe­cu­tion is sim­i­lar to the Department’s refusal to answer such requests from coun­sel for Mr. Carruthers pri­or to his failed exe­cu­tion. The renewed call on Gov. Lee asks him to pre­vent anoth­er botched exe­cu­tion. ​“Only by allow­ing the court process to be ful­ly lit­i­gat­ed can Tennesseans be con­fi­dent that the State can prop­er­ly and humane­ly car­ry out Mr. Hines’ execution.”

On July 10, 2026, act­ing U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, in a notice filed by the Department of Justice Office of Legal Policy, cer­ti­fied that Tennessee ​“has estab­lished a post-con­vic­tion cap­i­tal coun­sel mech­a­nism sat­is­fy­ing the require­ments of chap­ter 154 of title 28 of the United States code.” With this cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, the fed­er­al habeas dead­line for Tennessee pris­on­ers to file peti­tions for relief is reduced from one year to six months and has retroac­tive effect to the year 1997, poten­tial­ly affect­ing the fed­er­al appeals of all death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers in Tennessee. The effect of any state cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is the per­ma­nent lim­i­ta­tion of fed­er­al review for state death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers based sole­ly on a state’s claims as to the qual­i­ty of its post-con­vic­tion coun­sel, in a deci­sion that can­not be changed even if the qual­i­ty of counsel deteriorates.