Nashville judge allows death row inmates to add failed TN executions to lawsuit. Here’s what that means for their case – WSMV

Nashville judge allows death row inmates to add failed TN executions to lawsuit. Here’s what that means for their case  WSMV

A Nashville judge on Friday allowed death row inmates to add the failed attempted to execute Tony Carruthers and Christa Pike to their lawsuit over how Tennessee puts people to death. NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) – A Nashville judge on Friday allowed death row inmates to add the failed attempts to execute Tony Carruthers and Christa Pike to their lawsuit over how Tennessee puts people to death. The suit is not about whether Tennessee can use the death penalty. It is about how the state carries out executions and whether its procedures put prisoners at risk of unnecessary pain and suffering. Nine death row inmates filed the suit last year, challenging Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol.

The inmates claim flaws in the state’s procedures, such as the training and qualifications of medical personnel and the secrecy behind the drug used to execute people, pose an unconstitutional risk of cruel and unusual punishment, which is prohibited by the 8th Amendment. The state has argued there is no proof of that and that the claims are hypothetical. In May, executioners spent more than an hour trying to establish an IV line for Carruthers before the execution was stopped. In September, Pike survived after two doses of the execution drug were administered. She was taken to a hospital, where she remained hospitalized for days. The