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

Within hours of the botched exe­cu­tion, attor­neys from the Federal Public Defender’s Office filed a new fed­er­al law­suit nam­ing Dr. Mark Walton Fowler as the physi­cian tasked with estab­lish­ing IV access and alleged he had not placed a cen­tral IV line in a patient in over a decade. In a depo­si­tion, Dr. Fowler stat­ed he last placed a cen­tral line around 2013, when he worked in an emer­gency room, and that he had placed a dozen or more cen­tral lines dur­ing his career — one that end­ed with a guide wire in the patient’s carotid vein. Dr. Fowler con­firmed in a depo­si­tion that he has no cur­rent hos­pi­tal priv­i­leges, mean­ing no hos­pi­tal has autho­rized him to prac­tice or per­form pro­ce­dures at its facility. 

The law­suit seeks to pre­vent Tennessee from attempt­ing to exe­cute Mr. Carruthers a sec­ond time using IV meth­ods unless the process is car­ried out by an indi­vid­ual qual­i­fied, licensed, and present­ly autho­rized by a med­ical facil­i­ty to estab­lish a cen­tral IV line. Assistant Federal Defender Amy Harwell, who rep­re­sents Mr. Carruthers, told media of the broad­er prob­lems under­ly­ing the state’s use of med­ical pro­fes­sion­als in exe­cu­tions. ​“Most med­ical pro­fes­sion­als do not par­tic­i­pate in lethal injec­tions because it vio­lates their eth­i­cal oblig­a­tion ​‘to do no harm.’” Ms. Harwell also called on Gov. Lee to ​“launch yet anoth­er inves­ti­ga­tion into TDOC’s exe­cu­tion prac­tices to deter­mine how the Department came to rely on such incom­pe­tent, uneth­i­cal, and unqual­i­fied medical professionals.” 

Convicted and sen­tenced to death for his alleged involve­ment in the kid­nap­ping and mur­der of Marcellos Anderson, Delois Anderson, and Frederick Tucker in 1994, Mr. Carruthers has con­sis­tent­ly main­tained his inno­cence, and no foren­sic evi­dence has ever con­nect­ed him to the crime. Prosecutors relied almost entire­ly on the tes­ti­mo­ny of a jail­house infor­mant, who Mr. Carruthers’ coun­sel now knows was paid for his tes­ti­mo­ny. There is uniden­ti­fied phys­i­cal evi­dence from the crime scene, includ­ing fin­ger­prints and an unknown male DNA pro­file which have nev­er been ana­lyzed despite many requests by Mr. Carruthers’ coun­sel. In addi­tion to DNA test­ing, there are five fin­ger­prints that were recov­ered from the crime scene that do not match Mr. Carruthers and remain unmatched at this time. 

At tri­al, Mr. Carruthers was forced to rep­re­sent him­self because his tri­al judge became frus­trat­ed with his repeat­ed dis­missal of court-appoint­ed coun­sel — which his coun­sel argued was ​“due to his long­stand­ing and well-doc­u­ment­ed men­tal ill­ness.” Mr. Carruthers did not ask to rep­re­sent him­self at tri­al and repeat­ed­ly request­ed legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Post-con­vic­tion attor­neys for Mr. Carruthers wrote in a 2019 fil­ing that his per­for­mance at tri­al was ​“one of the most sin­gu­lar­ly inept, inef­fec­tive, and dis­as­trous cross-exam­i­na­tions pos­si­ble, one that seemed designed to secure not only a guilty ver­dict, but a death sen­tence.” Counsel for Mr. Carruthers have unsuc­cess­ful­ly argued that their client can­not legal­ly be exe­cut­ed because of his severe men­tal ill­ness. According to a fil­ing from February 2026, Mr. Carruthers has a ​“per­va­sive and all-con­sum­ing obses­sion that a cabal of cor­rupt judges, pros­e­cu­tors, and defense attor­neys have con­spired to secure his con­vic­tion and death sen­tence.” The fil­ing also not­ed that Mr. Carruthers has called the Tennessee Federal Public Defender’s office as often as 300 times in one day. 

With Gov. Lee’s one-year reprieve in effect, the ACLU has called Mr. Carruthers’ attempt­ed exe­cu­tion ​“botched and tor­tur­ous,” and con­tin­ues to call for DNA test­ing of the remain­ing evi­dence. ​“Permitting Tony Carruthers’ exe­cu­tion to move for­ward with­out order­ing DNA test­ing was already a pro­found injus­tice,” said Ms. DeLiberato. She added, “[t]oday, that injus­tice became out­right bar­bar­ic after Mr. Carruthers was sub­ject to a botched exe­cu­tion attempt.” Ms. Harwell told the press, ​“We ask the Governor once again to pause exe­cu­tions to ensure that the state is fol­low­ing its own rules and to imple­ment appropriate oversight.” 

Three more indi­vid­u­als are sched­uled for exe­cu­tion in Tennessee in 2026: Anthony Hines (August 13), Christa Pike (September 30), and Gary Wayne Sutton (December 3).