US execution halted after officials fail to find a vein

Tennessee stopped the planned execution of death row inmate Tony Carruthers after medical staff could not secure the intravenous access needed to carry it out, officials said.

Carruthers, 57, had been set to die by lethal injection at a Nashville prison for the 1994 killings of Delois Anderson, her son Marcellos Anderson and Frederick Tucker.

According to the Tennessee Department of Corrections, medical personnel successfully placed a primary IV line for the lethal drugs but were unable to locate a suitable vein for the required backup line.

“The execution was then called off,” the department said in a statement.

Stacy Rector, executive director of Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (TADP), said the “botched execution attempt of Tony Carruthers is horrifying but not surprising”.

“TADP has sounded the alarm for years about the serious problems with lethal injection and urged our state toward greater transparency so these problems can be addressed,” Ms Rector said.

Carruthers was one of two inmates scheduled to be executed in the United States yesterday.

In Florida, Richard Knight, 47, was executed by lethal injection at 6.13 pm (11.13pm Irish time) for the 2000 murders of a woman and her four-year-old daughter.

So far this year, 14 executions have been carried out in the United States – seven in Florida, four in Texas, two in Oklahoma and one in Arizona.

The country recorded 47 executions last year, the highest annual total since 2009, when 52 people were put to death.

Florida carried out the most executions in 2025, with 19, followed by Alabama, South Carolina and Texas, where there were five each.

Lethal injection accounted for 39 of last year’s executions, while three were carried out by firing squad and five by nitrogen hypoxia, a method in which nitrogen gas is pumped into a face mask, causing the prisoner to suffocate.

United Nations experts have condemned the use of nitrogen gas in capital punishment as cruel and inhumane.

The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while three others – California, Oregon and Pennsylvania – have moratoriums in place.

US President Donald Trump supports capital punishment and has called for broader use of it “for the vilest crimes”.

In April, President Trump’s Department of Justice said it is seeking to widen the use of the death penalty in federal capital cases and add the firing squad, electrocution and gas as methods of execution.