Op-Ed: Execution Attempt Succeeded Only in 'Agony'

Maria DeLiberato went to Tennessee's Riverbend prison in May expecting to see her longtime client, Tony Carruthers, put to death. Instead, she says she watched the state botch the job in real time. In a New York Times opinion piece, the veteran capital defense lawyer first lays out her case that Carruthers, convicted of murdering three people, is innocent. When efforts to overturn his conviction failed, DeLiberato went to the prison for the execution, "to be a face of love in the room." But, she adds, "nothing prepared me to witness the agony that Mr. Carruthers experienced in the execution chamber."

Execution staff spent roughly an hour repeatedly puncturing Carruthers' arms, hand, foot, and chest in search of a vein, while a doctor who hadn't performed what's known as a "central line" in more than a decade tried and failed to insert one. As Carruthers groaned and bled, the illusion of a "clinical" procedure, she argues, gave way to something chaotic and painful—until a call from the governor halted the execution for at least a year. Carruthers said of the doctor afterward, "He was hurting me, and he knew he was hurting me." DeLiberato writes that "all of the words I could use to describe what I saw and what the State of Tennessee did and failed to do pale in comparison with that simple observation." Read the full essay.