The execution of a Tennessee death row inmate convicted of kidnping and killing three people was called off Thursday after the execution team tried and failed for over an hour to establish an intravenous line.

The state won’t try to execute Tony Carruthers for at least a year, Gov. Bill Lee announced. The Tennessee Department of Correction said medical personnel had quickly established a primary IV line but were unable to find a suitable vein for a backup line, which is required by the state’s execution protocol.

After efforts to insert a central line also failed, officials called off the execution. Maria DeLiberato, an attorney for Carruthers, said she saw him “wincing and groaning” while officials attempted to find a vein, calling it “horrible” to watch.

At the time of the governor’s reprieve, DeLiberato was addressing reporters and began crying upon hearing the news.

TN ANNOUNCES NEW EXECUTION METHOD THAT COULD ALLOW STATE TO RESUME EXECUTIONS AFTER LAST ONE HALTED IN 2022

Tonya Carruthers closes her eyes in prayer with other protesters against the execution of Tony Carruthers at the Tennessee Citol in Nashville, Tenn., on Monday, May 18, 2026. Carruthers’ execution was halted Thursday after the execution team tried and failed for over an hour to establish an intravenous line. ( Images; )

“That’s amazing!” she said. “I’m so grateful!”

Carruthers was sentenced to death for the 1994 kidnpings and murders of Marcellos Anderson; his mother, Delois Anderson; and Frederick Tucker in Memphis. At trial, he was forced to represent himself after he repeatedly complained about his court-pointed attorneys and threatened to harm several of them.

Carruthers’ “paranoia and delusions” prevented him from being able to cooperate with court-pointed counsel, but the trial judge viewed this behavior as willful, his current attorneys said.

The conviction was based primarily on the testimony of individuals who claimed to have heard Carruthers confess to or discuss the crimes. No physical evidence tying him to the murders was presented at trial.

Prosecutors alleged that Anderson was a drug dealer and that Carruthers was attempting to take over the drug trade in his Memphis neighborhood. The witnesses who claimed to have heard Carruthers confess included a man who was later revealed to be a police informant, who subsequently told the media he was paid for his testimony.

EXECUTION SCHEDULED FOR TEXAS DEATH ROW INMATE CONVICTED IN ‘SHAKEN BABY’ CASE AS LAWYERS MAINTAIN INNOCENCE

Tori Carruthers and Latobiya Carruthers close their eyes in prayer with other protesters against the execution of Tony Carruthers at the Tennessee Citol in Nashville, Tenn., on May 18, 2026. ()

James Montgomery, a co-defendant, was originally sentenced to death alongside Carruthers, but was later resentenced and released from prison in 2015, according to court filings.

In their petition, Carruthers’s attorneys argued that he was sentenced to death largely because a medical examiner testified that the victims were buried alive. That claim was later withdrawn, and subsequent experts have stated it was false.

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In addition, his legal team argued that he was incompetent and should not be executed. Carruthers believed the government was bluffing about the execution in order to coerce him into accepting a plea deal that existed only in his mind, they claimed.

Protesters gather at the Tennessee Citol in Nashville on May 18, 2026, to oppose the execution of Tony Carruthers. ()

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By doing so, Carruthers believed the government could avoid paying him millions of dollars he thought he was owed.

He was convinced that his own attorneys were part of a conspiracy against him and refused to speak with them, according to court filings.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Kyiv — Ukraine is implementing “enhanced security measures in the northern regions” near its border with Belarus as Russia holds joint nuclear drills with its close ally, for which Moscow says “nuclear munitions were delivered” to field storage facilities.

Kyiv announced the heightened security posture along its northern border Thursday after warning for weeks of a possible fresh attack coming from Belarus, Russia’s chief regional ally.

Kyiv has sounded the alarm that Russia may use Belarus — which it used as a springboard to launch its ongoing, full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 — to stage a new offensive from the north, including toward the cital Kyiv.

Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) said its units and the army were “carrying out a comprehensive set of enhanced security measures in the northern regions of our country.”

The measures — including stepped up checks and controls of individuals and properties — “will serve as an effective deterrent to any aggressive actions or operations by the enemy and its ally,” the SBU said in a statement.

The Kremlin on Monday dismissed Ukrainian allegations that it wanted to drag Belarus further into the war as “an attempt at further incitement.”

But on Thursday, Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement that, “as part of the nuclear forces exercise” taking place with Belarus, “nuclear munitions were delivered to the field storage facilities of the [Russian] missile brigade’s position” in the country.

A video posted Thursday on social media by Belarus’ Ministry of Defense, which peared to have been created by the Russian Defense Ministry, showed a truck driving through a forest and unloading an item said to be related to the nuclear munitions.

Russia’s military said the missile brigade in Belarus was carrying out training to receive munitions for mobile Iskander-M tactical missile launch systems, including exercises in loading munitions onto launch vehicles and moving them clandestinely in preparation for a hypothetical launch.

Speaking Wednesday, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said the alliance was monitoring the Russian-Belorussian exercises and warned that it’s reaction to any Russian nuclear attack would be “devastating,” according to the Kyiv Independent.

There has been little significant change in the trajectory of the war, now well into its fifth year, in recent months, though Ukrainian forces — taking advantage of drone warfare technology — have, according to multiple reports, managed to at least slow the rate of Russia’s encroachment.

A Wall Street Journal report published this week argued that Ukraine had in fact “wrestled Russia’s much-larger army almost to a halt in recent months, having gained a tactical and technological edge,” but it cautioned that it was too soon to declare the war had reached “a strategic turning point.”

A Brooklyn woman who drowned her three children in the Atlantic Ocean near Coney Island’s famous boardwalk will spend decades behind bars.

Erin Merdy, 34, was sentenced Wednesday after pleading guilty earlier this year to first-degree murder charges in the 2022 deaths of her 7-year-old son Zachary, her 4-year-old daughter Liliana and her 3-month-old son Oliver.

“No sentence can fully measure the loss of a seven-year-old, a four-year-old and a three-month-old baby, or the grief their loved ones will carry forever,” Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said in a statement.

“We sought the strongest possible accountability in this devastating case, and while nothing can bring these children back, this sentence ensures the defendant will be held responsible for taking their lives,” he added.

JUDGE SENTENCES NEVADA MOM FOR DROWNING YOUNG SON, DAUGHTER: ‘I WILL REMEMBER YOUR CASE FOREVER’

New York Police investigators examine a stretch of beach at Coney Island where three children were found dead in the surf, Sept. 12, 2022, in New York. ( Photo/Joseph Frederick)

Gonzalez said the children’s lives were taken “in the most heartbreaking and unthinkable way.”

The children were found the morning of Sept. 12, 2022, after one of Merdy’s relatives called 911 expressing concern the children might be in danger.

Prosecutors said Merdy left the beach around 1:25 a.m. and began walking toward the artment of the father of her youngest child.

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The children of Erin Merdy, 30, were found unconscious near the shoreline of Coney Island Beach during a frantic overnight search early Monday, Sept. 12, 2022. (Theodore Parisienne/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via )

Authorities later found Merdy barefoot and soaking wet about two miles from where the children were discovered.

According to prosecutors, Merdy repeatedly said the children were gone and that she was sorry.

The children’s bodies were recovered hours later along the shoreline just steps from the boardwalk.

MELODEE BUZZARD’S GRANDMOTHER SHREDS POSSIBLE INSANITY DEFENSE FOR ACCUSED KILLER MOM: ‘PLANNED EVERYTHING’

A Brooklyn woman was sentenced to decades in prison in connection with the drowning deaths of her three children. (Theodore Parisienne/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via )

The city medical examiner ruled the deaths homicides caused by drowning.

Prosecutors said surveillance video showed Merdy walking toward the ocean with the children shortly before 1 a.m.

Merdy’s mother told the New York Daily News at the time that her daughter had recently struggled with mental health issues and may have been experiencing postpartum depression.

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“I reached out to her yesterday and she said she was doing laundry and I said I wanted to speak to the kids,” Jacqueline Scott, 56, told the outlet. “I tried to call her twice on the phone after that and there was no answer.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

A former federal prosecutor was charged this week with emailing herself a report on the Justice Department’s investigation into President Trump that a judge had kept under lock and key.

Carmen Lineberger was indicted Tuesday on two counts of theft of government property, plus counts of concealing and removing a public record and altering a public record. She was arraigned Wednesday and pleaded not guilty.

The charges focus on a report penned by former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, whose team charged Mr. Trump with trying to overturn his 2020 election loss and allegedly mishandling classified documents. The election-related parts of the report were released in mid-January 2025, but a week later, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon blockedformer Attorney General Merrick Garland “or his successor(s)” from releasing the portion on classified documents, known as “Volume II.”

The indictment does not specify what, if anything, Lineberger allegedly planned to do with the documents.

Lineberger’s attorney declined to comment.

The Volume II report at the center of Tuesday’s indictment was compiled after Smith charged Mr. Trump in 2023 with retaining sensitive government documents from his first term and storing them at Mar-a-Lago. The then-former president and two employees were also charged with conspiracy to obstruct a federal investigation. Mr. Trump has long denied wrongdoing and cast the investigation — which included an FBI search of Mar-a-Lago — as politically motivated.

Cannon dismissed the indictment in 2024 on the grounds that Smith was unlawfully pointed. Then, one day after Mr. Trump was sworn in for his second term, Cannon said the Justice Department cannot release or share Smith’s report on the probe, on the grounds that it could unfairly prejudice the two Trump staffers whose criminal cases remained open.

Cannon did not prevent the Justice Department from releasing Volume I of Smith’s report, which focused on Mr. Trump’s efforts to remain in office after losing in 2020. The charges against Mr. Trump hit a roadblock in mid-2024 after the Supreme Court ruled the president has immunity for official acts, and the case was dismissed after Mr. Trump won back the presidency. Smith argued in Volume I that Mr. Trump would have been convicted if not for his return to office.