Law360 (May 21, 2026, 5:15 PM EDT) -- Tennessee on Thursday halted the execution of Tony Von Carruthers, a man convicted of a triple murder who was forced to represent himself at his capital trial, after officials failed to establish a suitable backup IV line for lethal injection drugs, according to statements from state officials and his attorneys.

Gov. Bill Lee granted Carruthers a temporary reprieve from execution for one year, according to a statement issued by his office.

The halted execution at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville came only hours after the U.S. Supreme Court denied three separate emergency applications to halt his execution in which Carruthers argued he was improperly denied the opportunity to conduct DNA testing that could prove he was wrongfully convicted, or render his verdict or sentence more favorable.

"Permitting Tony Carruthers' execution without ordering DNA testing was a grave injustice. This injustice turned barbaric when Tennessee's efforts to set an IV line for the lethal drugs failed and the executioners continued to press forward anyway with the botched execution," Cassy Stubbs, the director of the Capital Punishment Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement.

In an official statement, the Tennessee Department of Correction said that prison medical personnel "quickly" established a primary IV line for the chemicals, but was then unable to "immediately" find a backup line as required by the state's lethal injection execution protocol.

But the ACLU appeared to dispute those assertions, saying executioners struggled for over an hour to secure an IV line, attempting to insert IV lines into his arms, feet and neck while Carruthers bled and groaned in pain during what the organization described as a "torturous" execution attempt lasting nearly 90 minutes.

"The State of Tennessee is currently torturing a man who maintains his innocence in the name of justice. This is not how our system is supposed to work," Melanie Verdecia, an attorney at Quarles & Brady LLP representing Carruthers' pro bono, said in a statement.

Maria DeLiberato, senior counsel at the ACLU, said Carruthers' legal team will "continue to push the governor to use this moment to allow the forensic testing that should have happened long ago."

"Tennessee cannot continue torturing a man while refusing to answer serious questions about his innocence," she said in a statement.

Carruthers was convicted for kidnapping and murdering Marcellos Anderson, his mother Delois Anderson and his friend Frederick Tucker in 1994. If Tennessee succeeds in executing him, advocates say Carruthers would be the first pro se defen­dant to be put to death in over 100 years.

A codefendant, James Montgomery, was also convicted for the killings, but the Tennessee Supreme Court later vacated his convictions and death sentences, finding that Carruthers' forced self-representation prejudiced his defense — all while affirming Carruthers' sentence.

In a last-ditch effort to spare his life, Carruthers' attorneys asked the Supreme Court to stay the execution while it considered a petition for certiorari and a separate petition for habeas corpus relief presenting several legal theories, including that he is innocent of his crime, claims involving untest­ed DNA evi­dence and concerns over his alleged men­tal ill­ness.

One of those filings took the unusual form of an "original" habeas petition filed directly in the Supreme Court, in which Carruthers asked the justices to take the extraordinary step of considering habeas relief outside the usual process, bypassing the normal route through a U.S. district court.

In the petition, Carruthers asked the court to transfer the case to a district court for an evidentiary hearing on claims of actual innocence and prosecutorial misconduct, arguing he never received a fair trial.

Federal defenders with the Middle District of Tennessee's capital habeas unit argued that the trial judge improperly deprived Carruthers of counsel after a series of appointed attorneys were allowed to withdraw because of conflicts with him. Those tensions, the petition said, worsened as Carruthers grew increasingly frustrated with what he viewed as uncommitted and, at times, openly antagonistic representation.

"The trial court's decision to force him to represent himself, especially without assistance from stand-by counsel, severely prejudiced Carruthers's ability to present his defense," the defenders wrote, describing the man's self-representation as "disastrous."

The petition argued that the state's case was weak from the start: there was no eyewitness testimony, no forensic evidence linking Carruthers to the murders and no coherent theory identifying who actually committed the killings.

Instead, Carruthers' attorneys said, the prosecution relied on "a patchwork of information obtained primarily from snitches" and even engaged in misconduct.

In particular, the petition focused on Alfredo Shaw, a man facing car theft charges who falsely claimed Carruthers confessed to him about the killings before later recanting in a television interview. Shaw's statements were crucial in securing a grand jury indictment charging Carruthers with capital murder.

The attorneys argued prosecutors allegedly "goaded" Carruthers, who lacked an attorney on his side at trial, to call Shaw to the witness stand despite the prosecution rebuking him as a lying, unreliable witness.

Eager to show the jury that the prosecution began as a lie, Carruthers called Shaw to testify, but that decision backfired, giving prosecutors an opportunity "to endorse and bolster the very testimony they had repudiated as unreliable stories of a liar."

Evidence produced in August 2024 under court order also showed that the state concealed Shaw's longstanding role as a paid informant, and his repeated work for law enforcement agencies in Memphis.

But Shaw was only one of five key prosecution witnesses who gave false, misleading or materially unreliable testimony, according to the petition.

Another involved statements by an assistant medical examiner for Shelby County, Dr. O'Brian Smith, who testified that all three victims had been buried alive, telling the jury about the suffering they experienced while being crushed under the weight of the earth and each other. That testimony, which Smith later withdrew, bolstered the state's argument that the killings were "especially heinous, atrocious or cruel" to support a death sentence under Tennessee law.

In the habeas petition, Carruthers argued Smith's claim was medically false and unfairly inflamed the jury.

"These are extraordinary circumstances and they require this Court's exercise of its extraordinary powers," the petition said.

In a cert petition filed Wednesday that the U.S. Supreme Court denied, Carruthers argued Tennessee state courts violated his statutory right to seek DNA testing by creating arbitrary procedural barriers, bouncing him between courts and ultimately rejecting his request based on timing considerations not found in Tennessee's post-conviction DNA statute.

Carruthers sought testing of key crime-scene evidence, including victims' fingernail scrapings and cloth bindings used on victims. The testing would have taken two weeks to complete, according to the petition.

"Mr. Carruthers has a due process right to obtain the DNA testing that may result in his walking out of prison as a free man, or at least reducing his sentence of death," the petition said.

Advocates against the death penalty pointed to Carruthers' habeas rights and failed execution as a case in point for abolishing capital punishment across the country.

"Tennessee has effectively made the case against the death penalty," Laura Porter, the executive director for U.S. Campaign to End the Death Penalty, said in a statement. "They forced Tony Carruthers to represent himself at his own capital trial, failed to test DNA and fingerprint evidence and now they have failed to execute him. It is time to end the death penalty."

--Editing by Alex Hubbard.

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