TENNESSEE
MEMPHIS, Tenn. - Tennessee executed Anthony Darrell Hines by lethal injection on Thursday, August 13, 2026 at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. He was pronounced dead at 10:43 a.m., the Tennessee Department of Correction's execution proceeding confirmed through media witnesses and wire reports.
Hines, 66, was convicted of first-degree murder in the 1985 stabbing death of a motel housekeeper in Kingston Springs. He had been on death row for nearly four decades. His conviction was final, and Governor Bill Lee declined clemency in the days before the execution.
The accountability question The 901 Report flagged before the execution now has a reported answer. NBC News reported that the doctor involved in the failed May 2026 execution of Memphis's Tony Carruthers, which reportedly took roughly an hour, participated in the Hines execution. The state had refused to say beforehand whether that physician would take part, and Hines' attorneys had argued in their final filings that the assigned physician was not qualified to place an IV line in a man left partially paralyzed by two prior strokes. Those appeals were unsuccessful.
Media witnesses reported groaning, gurgling, and facial discoloration beginning around 10:34 a.m., according to FOX17 Nashville's account of the witness pool. Accounts of Hines' final words differ across outlets: the Associated Press reported he said "Tell my son hello," WSMV reported he said "Tell my son I love him" after initially declining a statement, and FOX17 reported he declined to make a statement. His son witnessed the execution and was visibly upset, according to FOX17.
The execution was one of three carried out in the United States that day, the first same-day triple execution in nearly 16 years, per the Associated Press: Oklahoma executed Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez at 10:13 a.m. and Alabama executed Jeremy Williams at 6:16 p.m.
The state never disclosed the lethal injection drug test results Hines' counsel demanded, and it has not publicly identified the participating physician on the record.
Why It Matters for Memphis
Shelby County produces a large share of Tennessee's death row, and the May execution that raised the physician question was of a Memphis defendant. If the same doctor participated on August 13, as NBC News reports, then nothing about the personnel at the center of May's complications changed before the state's next execution, and the witness accounts of distress from the chamber become part of the record the next Shelby County capital case will cite.
The Oversight Question
Tennessee carried out its first execution since a visibly troubled one without answering either standing disclosure demand: who participates, and what the drug testing showed. What, in writing, did the Department of Correction review or change between the May and August executions?
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