The State Tried to Kill Tony Carruthers. It Failed.

Perhaps attention over a failed state killing will bring sorely needed attention to state killing more broadly. As a veteran researcher of the death penalty over the last 18 years, I can only hope so.

This week, Tony Carruthers became the seventh person to survive his own execution by lethal injection, joining the ranks of condemned prisoners in Alabama, Ohio, and Idaho. Tennessee executioners could not establish IV access, and if there’s one thing lethal injection requires, it’s access to a vein.

I have no idea whether Tony Carruthers is innocent (as he claims) of the three murders for which he was convicted and sentenced to death. But this is a man who represented himself at trial, so I cannot help but be skeptical that the state got this one right—particularly in light of the fact that there is no physical evidence tying Carruthers to the crime, and the State of Tennessee has steadfastly refused to perform a DNA test on a material piece of evidence that could very well prove his innocence.

In many ways, the Carruthers case exemplifies so much of what is wrong with the death penalty today. As is often the case with exonerations from death row, Carruthers was convicted on the testimony of a paid informant. And as is often the case, there are concerns about Carruthers’ mental health (although he steadfastly denies them). Also common is the fact that Carruthers had a co-defendant who plea-bargained his way to a reduced sentence. He was released from prison back in 2015.

But aside from concerns ranging from Carruthers’ substandard representation, to his mental health, to factual innocence, to gross sentencing disparities with his codefendant—let’s just assume for the moment that Carruthers was flat-out guilty of the three murders for which he was convicted and sentenced to death. Tony Carruthers has been on death row for just over 30 years. I am not the same person I was 30 years ago. Are you?

This is not to suggest that Carruthers should be freed (unless, of course, his innocence is proven). But it is to say that if the State of Tennessee thinks it’s killing the Tony Carruthers of 30 years ago, it needs to think again. My own in-depth study of executions across the country has given me a front row seat to who these people are at the end—not who they are at the time of their terrible crimes, or who they were at the time of their trials, but who they are when prison guards have to kill them in our name.

We tend to freeze these people in a moment in time. But time works changes, and death row is a testament to humans having the greatest capacity to change of them all. We are not killing the people we think we are killing. Almost invariably, the person who committed those terrible crimes died inside long ago.

The death penalty today is nothing more than mindless vengeance, and taxpayers are paying through the nose for it. Indeed, Tennessee has reported that it spent $650,000 on execution-related expenses since its moratorium was lifted last year. That’s not counting the millions that Tennessee taxpayers are spending on death penalty trials, and appeals, and housing, and everything else. That’s just money spent on executions—which are all too often are botched, like Tennessee’s failed attempt to kill Tony Carruthers.

In its thirst for vengeance, the State of Tennessee has once again fallen below the standard of basic decency, causing further trauma to everyone involved—not just Tony Carruthers, but also his family, the victims’ family, the prison staff, his lawyers, and the list goes on. Problems establishing IV access are not exceptional. They are inevitable given the geriatric population on today’s death row. If any good can come out of the latest botched execution attempt, I hope it is a spotlight on how the death penalty actually works—and more to the point, how it doesn’t.