The physician who oversaw Christa Pike’s execution was also a part of a failed execution just a few months prior, and it was revealed that he hadn’t performed the key IV procedure for 13 years before the two recent attempts.
On May 21, Dr. Mark Fowler and three members of an intravenous team spent over an hour struggling to insert two IV lines during the planned execution of death row inmate Tony Carruthers.
The execution was eventually called off, and Fowler was asked to serve the same role just four months later for Pike’s execution on September 30.
Carruthers’ lawyer Maria DeLiberto said in a court-filed declaration that just 30 minutes before his execution was scheduled to take place, the IV team had still not established the two peripheral IV sites that were needed to lethally inject the inmate, according to People.
DeLiberto claimed that Fowler had been called into the room to assist in the execution, despite the fact that the TDOC Lethal Injection Execution Protocol states that the physician is only tasked with “determining if the inmate is deceased” and “establishing central line IV if necessary.”
Fowler reportedly attempted to insert a central line in two locations, but was unsuccessful both times.
By the time Carruthers’ execution was called off, he was “clearly in pain” and “gutturally groaning” as he said that it “hurts,” according to the attorney.
Just one year before Carruthers’ failed execution, Fowler said in a 2025 deposition that he did not have hospital privileges or privileges to insert a central IV line at any medical facility, according to People.
He added that the last time he performed the procedure with those privileges was in 2013, and he had not set a central line since then.
Gail A. Van Norman, M.D. — professor emeritus of anesthesiology and pain medicine at the University of Washington — said that Fowler “does not have the current experience or training that would be required to obtain or retain privileges to place central lines at many, if not most, major healthcare institutions today.”
Norman added in her deposition that the method Fowler used when inserting a central line is a “violation of the current standard of care.”
Following Pike’s failed execution, Fowler said she survived because an IV was improperly placed and failed to send the pentobarbital into her veins and instead went into her tissues.
“The investigation into why Tennessee keeps botching executions should have been launched in May when TDOC subjected Tony Carruthers to more than an hour of pain and suffering before his execution had to be called off,” Kit Thomas, Deputy Chief of the Capital Habeas Unit for the Federal Public Defender, Middle District of Tennessee, said.
Thomas added that Pike’s “botched execution happened after state officials ignored our warnings about their flawed protocol.”
“These problems will keep happening until Tennessee takes meaningful steps to increase transparency, oversight, and accountability in the execution process. Executions must not resume until it does,” Thomas concluded.
While Pike, 50, is currently in stable condition, her future is not yet known, as Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee paused all executions in the state after an investigation was launched into what went wrong.
