After exhausting state and federal appeals and 30 years in prison, convicted triple murderer Tony Carruthers was set to die yesterday by lethal injection. After more than an hour of trying to find a secondary vein for the “procedure,” the medical staff was unable to secure a line, and the execution was postponed.

Governor Bill Lee issued a reprieve, not indefinitely, but for one year. Lee, just two days before, had announced that, despite 130,000 petition signatures asking him to grant clemency, he would not intervene in the scheduled execution. Lee’s order yesterday to delay for one year was not an act of mercy, but a legal maneuver to better position the state for the imminent lawsuits from Carruthers’ attorneys and to potentially preserve the state’s death penalty protocol that had undergone extensive study prior to being reinstated just one year ago.

Proponents and opponents of the death penalty are generally firm in their beliefs. Neither waivers on the morality or necessity of their views. I am one who struggles with the issue, and the vacillating isn’t based in complex theological or philosophical wrangling, but what seems fair or unfair to me.

The case of Tanner Horner, a FedEx driver who sexually assaulted seven-year-old Athena Strand and was recently sentenced to death in Texas, does not get me “in my feels” about the fairness or cruelty of capital punishment. Horner pleaded guilty to the crime, and there is no doubt from the evidence shared during the sentencing phase that Tanner committed this especially aggravated act. While the defense argued mental disability and traumatic upbringing, the jury believed he knew right from wrong and, as required by Texas law to sentence someone to death, would be an ongoing threat to those around him.

In contrast, for every eight people put to death in the United States, one person on death row has been exonerated. Since 1973, more than 200 people in the country have been exonerated and released from death row. A study by the National Academy of Sciences estimated that 4.1% of persons on death row are likely innocent. Based on the 1,993 people awaiting execution, 82 of them could be innocent.

It is fair to say that death row mistakes are not one in a million, but much more common. It is also reasonable to stake out a position that if we are going to use capital punishment at all, there can be no doubt, which is why the saga of Tony Carruthers could have been avoided.

I don’t know if Carruthers kidnapped and murdered three people, then buried them underneath a fresh grave in a South Memphis cemetery. The jury heard the evidence presented at trial and determined that he was guilty. Of course, juries get it wrong. Like the jury in the Tyre Nichols case that determined police officers were not guilty of beating him to death, though we all watched it on video. What raises questions about Carruthers’ guilt are:

·         He represented himself at trial, after six assigned attorneys asked to be taken off the case because of threats from Carruthers. Nevertheless, he wasn’t qualified to represent himself.

·         New DNA evidence belonging to an unidentified male has never been tested in his case.

·         A jailhouse snitch, who was later determined to be a paid informant for the Sheriff’s Office and the Memphis Police Department, claimed Carruthers confessed to him. Prior to the trial, the informant appeared on a local television station and recanted. The prosecution did not call him as a witness, but the trial proceeded.

·         The medical examiner signed an affidavit contradicting his testimony regarding an aggravated factor of the crime. The testimony was that victims were likely still alive when they were buried, but the ME later retracted that statement.

·         Because Carruthers represented himself, no one conducted an extensive background or medical history. An experienced attorney would have. Following his conviction, those checks showed Carruthers suffered from mental illness and had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital at age 14 for five days.

·         Carruthers’ co-defendant, James Montgomery, has given a statement to defense attorneys that Carruthers was not involved in the crime. At the time of trial, Montgomery was also sentenced to death, but on appeal, a court found that Carruthers self-representation prejudiced Montgomery’s right to a fair trial. During his retrial, DNA on a blanket was tested and did not match Carruthers or Montgomery. Montgomery accepted a 27-year plea deal and was released in 2015.

Arguably, any one of these red flags could be a reason to pause before taking a man’s life. Taken together, they should have halted, at least temporarily if not permanently, the execution attempt. Now, a lack of prudence and genuine mercy by the Governor has resulted in justice evading the family of the victims and, quite possibly, Carruthers himself.