NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Chancellor Russell T. Perkins on Friday let death row inmates expand their statewide challenge to Tennessee lethal injection rules so the complaint can recount the failed attempts to execute Christa Pike and Tony Carruthers.
Chancellor Russell T. Perkins granted a motion to supplement the Burns v. Strada case under a state civil procedure rule that allows later events to be added. His order leaves the constitutionality of the protocol untouched for now. Perkins also declined to settle other arguments about how the original complaint was pleaded, saying those issues were not before him Friday.
Nine inmates filed the suit after the Tennessee Department of Correction published a new execution manual in January 2025. Lawyers for the attorney general office, defending the department, have argued the claims were speculative. Plaintiffs say six executions under the new protocol, including two that were stopped, now supply concrete evidence. Carruthers execution was halted in May after more than an hour of failed IV attempts. Pike survived two doses of pentobarbital in September and spent days in a hospital before returning to a prison infirmary.
The supplemental filing runs nearly 400 pages and also cites problems alleged in other 2025 and 2026 executions, from missing EKG paper to autopsy findings of pulmonary edema. Attorneys for the state did not broadly oppose rewriting the complaint but objected to the procedural path. Perkins directed the parties to set a new schedule so the state can answer the expanded filing. A trial is penciled for February 2027, and the state is expected to seek dismissal first.
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