A Tennessee death row inmate survived a botched execution after the doctors could not find a vein on different parts of his body. Tony Carruthers was supposed to be executed on May 21 at 10 a.m. for his crime dating back to 1994.

He suffered for more than an hour while strapped to the execution gurney. The executioner could not locate a vein on his chest, jugular, feet, shoulder, or arms. By the end, he was in pain and bleeding. His execution would have been the first one this year for Tennessee.

Maria DeLiberato, senior counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Capital Punishment Project, noted, “They tortured him.”

Amy Harwell, one of the attorneys, told USA Today that her client was in pain as the executioners attempted to set an IV line to administer the pentobarbital. She added that her client felt like being stabbed multiple times. They were able to put in a primary IV line, but failed to find another suitable one for a backup. The process requires a backup vein as a part of Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol.

Carruthers was convicted of kidnapping and murdering three people in 1994. Carruthers and his partner in crime, James Montgomery, kidnapped a 21-year-old drug dealer named Marcellos Anderson, his mother, 43-year-old Delois Anderson, and a 17-year-old friend.

The duo took them to a local cemetery and pushed them into an empty grave that had been dug for a scheduled funeral. They pushed all three of them into the grave and covered it with dirt and plywood.

They died after suffocation, and their bodies were not detected until the police investigation. Reportedly, there is a lack of physical proof that could connect Carruthers to the crime. His attorney and the American Civil Liberties Union demanded additional testing on fingerprints and forensic evidence that might have helped exonerate him.

Lucas Cameron Vaughn, interim legal director for the ACLU of Tennessee, noted, “We know that there is no physical evidence that matches Tony. Investigators recovered fingerprints from the home where the victims were kidnapped, and locations exactly where you would expect a kidnapper to have touched. None of those fingerprints matched Tony. To this day, they remain unidentified.”

Earlier, Kim Kardashian asked Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee to pause the execution so that the testing could be done. He granted Carruthers a temporary reprieve from execution for one year, so that may work in his favor.

The case has gained national interest, with many protesting for his execution to be stopped. Lee said on Tuesday that he will uphold the sentence of the state and does not plan to intervene. However, after the botched execution, there will be ample time for further investigation.