Tennessee aborts execution attempt after struggling to find vein

By Jonathan Allen

May ‌21 (Reuters) - Tennessee prison ​officials ​aborted their attempt to execute a man convicted of murders on Thursday after failing to ‌find a suitable vein for a lethal injection.

Tennessee ⁠Governor Bill Lee later granted a one-year reprieve from execution to ‌Tony Carruthers, 57, who ‌was sentenced to death after he was found guilty of kidnapping and murdering three people in 1994.

After ​Carruthers was taken to the execution chamber at a maximum-security prison in Nashville, prison officials spent more ⁠than an hour trying to establish an intravenous line before calling off the ​execution and returning him to his cell, according to an Associated Press reporter present as ​a media witness.

Prison officials were ‌able to set up a primary intravenous line, the Tennessee Department of Correction said in ⁠a statement, but struggled to establish a "backup line" required by the state's lethal injection protocol.

"I am granting Tony Von ⁠Carruthers a temporary reprieve from execution for one year," Lee said ​in a statement.

Carruthers becomes at least the seventh man to survive his execution date in the U.S. after a botched lethal injection ‌attempt, according to the abolitionist group Reprieve.

"Lethal injection is touted as a humane, 'medical' method ‌of execution. Bloody and prolonged execution attempts like this ⁠one expose the gruesome ‌reality," Matt Wells, ​Reprieve's U.S. deputy director, said in a statement.

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New YorkEditing by Bill ‌Berkrot)

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