Read the full article below: Tennessee paid $1.2M for execution drugs amid secrecy, failures: exclusive​

Evan Mealins and Kelly Puente, October 22, 2026

The state of Tennessee has spent $1.175 million on lethal injection chemicals in recent years while failing to carry out two of its three recent executions.

Nearly all other details about the lethal injection drugs, like where they came from, remain hidden from the public.

An attorney who represents people on death row said there is “absolutely no transparency” around the chemicals.

“It’s an awful lot of money for the taxpayer to be expending without any additional information about it,” said Kit Thomas, deputy chief of the capital habeas unit in the Federal Defender’s Office.

Records show the Tennessee Department of Correction made two payments for procuring lethal injection chemicals since Jan. 1, 2023. One payment, which The Tennessean previously reported, was for $525,000. The other was for $650,000.

The records don’t show when the drugs were purchased, how much pentobarbital Tennessee received, the price per dose or whether any of the drugs have expired.

Tennessee resumed executions in 2025 under a new, single-drug lethal injection protocol using pentobarbital, following a three-year hiatus prompted by the state’s failure to follow its previous three-drug protocol.

Since resuming executions, Tennessee has executed four prisoners and unsuccessfully attempted to execute two others: Pike and Tony Carruthers.

TDOC has fought in court the release of nearly any information related to lethal injection, from the chemicals’ expiration date to how much training its IV team has. The department cites a state law that shields the identity of any employee or contractor participating in the execution process.

The department said it was “unable to comment at this time” when asked about the drug purchases.

Pentobarbital is a barbiturate used to treat certain seizure disorders and euthanize animals.

The state’s $1.175 million in payments far exceeds the cost of individual vials of manufactured pentobarbital, although records do not reveal how much of the drug Tennessee purchased or whether the payments covered related expenses for procuring the pentobarbital, such as transportation.

A 50-milliliter vial of manufactured pentobarbital at the concentration Tennessee uses for executions typically costs between $2,100 and $2,800, according to Michaela Almgren, a University of South Carolina pharmacy professor who submitted a report in ongoing death penalty litigation.

Tennessee’s execution protocol calls for the injection of either two or four 50 ml syringes of pentobarbital, depending on whether the person is still alive.

Under Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol, the execution team prepares two syringes of pentobarbital ahead of time. The state must also have enough pentobarbital on hand for two more syringes of the drug if the first round fails to kill the prisoner. The protocol does not say whether syringes that were not used in an execution attempt can be used in future executions.

All major manufacturers of pentobarbital won’t sell their drugs directly to states for executions. Some states have purchased manufactured lethal injection drugs outside the normal supply chain at a high markup as a result. Manufacturers have sued at least two states, Nevada and Nebraska, for using their drugs in lethal injections without their consent.

There is another way to get pentobarbital.

Through compounding, pharmacists can take raw ingredients and make specialized drugs at a pharmacy. Unlike manufactured medications, compounded drugs are not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

TDOC has refused to reveal whether the pentobarbital it is using in executions is manufactured or compounded.

Pike, sentenced to death for a grisly 1995 murder in Knoxville, survived four 50 ml syringes of pentobarbital during the state’s failed attempt to execute her Sept. 30.

Her survival has raised new questions about the effectiveness of Tennessee’s lethal injection process, including whether the pentobarbital was properly prepared and administered.

Carruthers, convicted of killing three people who were abducted, shot and buried in a Memphis cemetery in 1994, walked out of the death chamber in May after the execution team failed to set the needed IV lines.

Gov. Bill Lee has paused executions in the state while an independent investigator reviews whether TDOC followed its protocol during Pike’s failed execution.

This is the second review of capital punishment in Tennessee undertaken during Lee’s tenure. The first revealed widespread problems with the execution process between 2018-2022, including a failure to properly test lethal injection drugs or provide a copy of the execution protocol to the pharmacy responsible for testing the drugs.

The Tennessee attorney general’s office recently told The Tennessean it paid Butler Snow law firm $269,403.08 for the investigation.

The records showing how much TDOC paid to procure lethal injection drugs were obtained through a public records request to the Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury. The Tennessean sought all records showing payments for the procurement of lethal injection drugs between Jan. 1, 2023 and Oct. 1, 2026.

The Tennessean received records of two emails sent by outgoing TDOC Commissioner Frank Strada to Comptroller Jason Mumpower reporting the payments. The records provided to The Tennessean don’t show the dates the emails were sent.

Tennessee law shields the identities of people and companies involved in obtaining execution drugs, but it requires the state to publicly report certain payments to contractors involved in carrying out executions. The law also requires confidential information to be redacted rather than used as grounds to withhold otherwise public records.

The Tennessean published the following op-ed on October 6, 2026.

On Sept. 30, the State of Tennessee tried to kill Christa Pike. It did not succeed.

Four months earlier, Tennessee tried to execute Tony Carruthers. That execution failed, too.

I am a United Methodist pastor and a chaplain to people on Tennessee’s death row, but my relationship with capital punishment began long before I became a chaplain.

I know what murder does to a family.

In 1997, when I was 17 years old, four children in my family were murdered by their father, Daryl Holton. Stephen Holton was 12, Brent Holton was 10, Eric Holton was 6 and Kayla Holton was 4. I served, alongside my father and uncles, as a pallbearer, carrying their small white caskets to their final resting place in rural Bedford County. Those children, along with their father, were my cousins.

Ten years later, Tennessee executed Daryl in the electric chair.

Conviction rooted in experience

So when I say I oppose the death penalty, I do not say it because I do not understand violence firsthand. I say it because I do.

Colleen Slemmer was 19 when Christa Pike participated in her murder in 1995. Colleen’s life mattered, and the brutality of her death should never be minimized to make opposition to capital punishment easier. For more than three decades, her family has carried a grief that no family should have to carry.

We can tell the truth about what Christa did and still ask whether killing her is justice, because after what happened Sept. 30, questions about drugs, IV access, personnel and protocols matter.

But perhaps we are asking the wrong question. Instead of asking how we make the machinery work better, perhaps we should ask whether the machinery itself is the problem.

Underneath all the clinical language of capital punishment, something remarkably simple is happening: Human beings are desperately trying to figure out how to kill human beings. Somebody must find the vein, somebody must prepare the drugs, somebody must give the order, somebody must watch and everyone must carry the memory afterward.

Does Tennessee have the courage to stop killing?

I have known people who were murdered. I have known people the state intended to kill. None of those experiences has made me believe less in accountability; they have made me believe less in killing. My Christian faith shapes that conviction, but you do not have to share my faith to question whether a government capable of imprisoning someone for life also needs the power to kill them.

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Mercy that requires pretending evil never happened is cheap mercy. We can look directly at what someone has done, require accountability and still insist that a human being is more than the worst thing they have ever done.

The dead do not come home because we execute someone. Stephen, Brent, Eric and Kayla did not come home when Tennessee executed their father. Nothing about Daryl’s execution resurrected those four children. I wish it could have.

That is the terrible thing about murder. There is no punishment capable of undoing it.

Tennessee can investigate what happened, revise its protocols and try again. And perhaps someday we will convince ourselves that we have perfected the machinery. Or we can ask a harder question: Why are we so committed to making the machinery work?

Perhaps honoring the dead does not require creating more of them. Perhaps justice can hold people accountable without asking us to become participants in the very thing we say we condemn. Perhaps Tennessee does not need a better way to execute people.

Perhaps we need the courage to stop.

The Rev. Timothy Holton-Overcast is a United Methodist pastor in Middle Tennessee and serves as a chaplain to people incarcerated on Tennessee’s death row. He writes here in his personal capacity.