The execution of a death row inmate in the US, canceled after they did not find a vein: How many years has Tony Carruthers been on death row
The execution by lethal injection of a death row inmate was delayed in the United States on Thursday because staff were unable to find a vein in the inmate, according to authorities cited by AFP.
Tony Carruthers, 57, was supposed to be executed in the prison in Nashville, Tennessee, for the 1994 murders of Delois Anderson, his son Marcello Anderson and Frederick Tucker.
The Tennessee Department of Corrections said medical personnel set up a main line to administer the lethal substances, but were unable to find a vein for a second injection route.
“The execution was then cancelled,” the department added in a statement.
Carruthers has been on “death row” for three decades
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee granted Tony Carruthers a one-year reprieve. He has already spent over thirty years “on death row” and has always maintained his innocence.
Stacy Rector, executive director of the anti-death penalty group Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (TADP), said the “failed execution attempt was appalling” but “not surprising.”
“For years, TADP has been sounding the alarm about the serious problems with lethal injection and urging our state to show greater transparency,” she added.
14 people have been executed in the US this year
Meanwhile, another man, Richard Knight, 47, was executed by lethal injection Thursday night in Florida for killing a woman and her 4-year-old daughter in 2000.
This execution brings to 14 the number of executions carried out this year in the United States. Last year, there were 47 executions, a record since 2009, when 52 people were executed.
The vast majority of executions are carried out by lethal injection, i.e. 39 in 2025.
Another five were carried out last year by nitrogen inhalation, a method used for the first time in the world by Alabama in 2024 and compared by UN experts to a form of “torture”, and three by firing squad in South Carolina, for the first time in the United States since 2010.
The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states. Three others, California, Oregon and Pennsylvania, observe a moratorium on executions at the governor's discretion.
Of the 14 executions this year, seven took place in Florida, four in Texas, two in Oklahoma and one in Arizona.
