NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Republican leaders in the General Assembly say they will investigate lethal injection’s reliability and consider other execution methods after Tennessee failed to execute two death row inmates in five months.
Gov. Bill Lee stopped the May execution of Tony Carruthers after a physician spent more than an hour trying to insert intravenous lines. Christa Pike survived two failed rounds of the lethal injection protocol on Sept. 30. Lee ordered a third-party review and paused all executions until the end of the year.
Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson said that if lethal injection is not reliable enough, lawmakers should take it off the table and look at something more predictable, listing the electric chair or a firing squad among options. He said he supports Lee’s decision to defer executions during the investigation.
Gubernatorial candidate and U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn said she favors reinstating the electric chair as the primary method. House Speaker Cameron Sexton said he favors looking at all alternatives, including the electric chair, firing squad or hanging, which Tennessee used as its method of execution until 1913.
Lethal injection has been Tennessee’s primary execution method since 2000. Offenders sentenced before Jan. 1, 1999, can request electrocution. Lee asked former U.S. Attorney Ed Stanton to lead an independent review of the Department of Correction’s actions in the Pike case. Stanton did a similar review in 2022.
Democratic leaders Raumesh Akbari and John Ray Clemmons called for restored legislative oversight of state agencies. Johnson and Sexton said the Republican supermajority has no intention of ending capital punishment. The governor has paused any more executions scheduled for this year until Stanton finishes his review.
