US lawyers say man on death row could be executed with expired lethal drugs

Execution method has long raised questions about Cruel and Unusual Punishment and botched executions.Lawyers for a Tennessee death row inmate say they are concerned the state may be planning to use expired Lethal Injection drugs at his execution on Thursday, amid growing concern across the country as states work to keep most information about their drugs secret.Tony Carruthers’s lawyers twice asked the Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) last month whether it had secured the appropriate drugs for his execution date and to ensure the drugs had not expired.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemslist 1 of 3Trump administration to prioritise seeking death penalty, use firing squadslist 2 of 3Tennessee executes Byron Black despite concerns about his defibrillatorlist 3 of 3US man executed with nitrogen gas for 1993 murderend of listAssistant Attorney General John W Ayers’s response did not directly answer, but said the department will comply with its Lethal Injection protocol, which includes regular inventory of the drugs to monitor expiration dates.Carruthers, 57, was sentenced to death after being found guilty of the 1994 kidnappings and murders of Marcellos Anderson, his mother Delois Anderson and Frederick Tucker.The Tennessee Department of Correction declined to answer on Wednesday when asked by The Associated Press news agency whether the drugs they plan to use to kill Carruthers are expired. Governor Bill Lee’s office did not immediately respond to a similar inquiry.Federal Public Defender Amy Harwell said in an email that expiration dates reflect when a drug can no longer be safely relied upon to obtain the desired result.“In the execution context, this may mean a slow, lingering death without a reliable loss of consciousness, as the body painfully and fitfully shuts down,” Harwell wrote.This Tennessee Department of Correction photo shows inmate Tony Carruthers [File: Tennessee Department of Correction via AP Photo]Public opposition to executions has made it difficult for prisons to obtain execution drugs, among the lingering issues for those who use Lethal Injection. Some states have been forced to speed up executions or stop them entirely due to expiration dates on drugs.