Who is Gary Sutton? Inmate’s execution paused after Christa Pike survives

Gary Wayne Sutton, a Tennessee death row inmate, has had his execution paused after Governor Bill Lee suspended all remaining executions in the state for 2026 following the failed execution of Christa Pike.

Sutton was convicted of the 1992 killings of siblings Tommy Griffin and Connie Branam and has spent three decades on death row.

Sutton was scheduled to receive a lethal injection on December 3, but Lee’s order to suspend executions for the rest of the year means the sentence will not be carried out as planned.

Who Is Gary Wayne Sutton?

Sutton, 61, was convicted in 1992 alongside his uncle, James Dellinger, for the murders of Tommy Griffin and Griffin’s sister, Connie Branam.

The pair were sentenced to life in prison, and later received death sentences for Griffin’s murder. Dellinger died in prison in 2023 aged 71.

Griffin, 24, was found shot in the back of the head near the Little River on February 24, 1992. Branam, 34, was discovered five days later inside her burned vehicle. At the time, Griffin’s family reported an ongoing feud between their family and Sutton’s before the killings.

Sutton was found guilty in a trial that lasted two weeks, but has maintained his innocence.

The family has appealed to Lee for a pardon and advocates for Sutton argue that there was no evidence linking him to the crimes.

The site “Justice for Gary Wayne Sutton” argues that the state relied on the testimony of a medical examiner who was later stripped of his license and discredited. They wrote that: “Gary had no motive to kill his close friend Tommy—a point which the state admitted during trial.”

Earlier this year, Sutton’s attorney said that Dellinger had been a controlling, older and abusive figure in Sutton’s life and continued to be that way while they were in prison. She added that Sutton had maintained his innocence and his case was “riddled with errors.”

This year, a judge ordered Sutton to be evaluated by state experts as part of ongoing litigation over his claim that he is intellectually disabled. A hearing on the claim was scheduled for October 2026. Under a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, executing people with intellectual disabilities violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Newsweek reached out to Sutton’s attorney via email for comment and is awaiting a response.

Tennessee’s 40 Death Row Inmates

There are currently 40 death-row prisoners in Tennessee, and three on that list were scheduled to be executed in 2026.

One of these was Tony Carruthers, 59, who was convicted of kidnapping and murdering three people in 1994.

The state attempted to execute Carruthers in May 2026, but failure to place an IV correctly meant that the execution was halted. Months later, Carruthers’ sister Dr. Tonya Hervey filed a complaint with the Tennessee Department of Health accusing Dr. Mark Walton Fowler of medical malpractice and ethics violations. He took over after execution staff spent roughly 40 minutes failing to establish a standard IV line.

Another was Christa Pike, Tennessee’s only woman on death row. Convicted of the 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer, the state attempted to execute Pike on September 30 but she was taken to the hospital after surviving two doses of pentobarbital.

The only other execution scheduled in the state for 2026 was that of Gary Sutton, while the remaining 37 inmates remain on the list for a later date.

Tennessee’s Execution Investigations

Lee said in a statement that he has ordered “a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred” during Pike’s failed execution on Wednesday.

In 2022, Lee stopped the scheduled execution of Oscar Smith shortly before it was due to take place because of what the state initially described as a “technical oversight” in preparing the lethal-injection drugs.

Days later, Lee halted all remaining executions scheduled for 2022 and ordered an independent review of Tennessee’s execution procedures, led by former U.S. Attorney Ed Stanton.

The resulting report, released in December 2022, found that Tennessee had repeatedly failed to follow its execution protocol, including by failing to conduct required endotoxin testing on lethal-injection drugs in multiple executions and planned executions dating back to 2018.

Executions resumed in 2025 after the Tennessee Department of Correction completed a comprehensive review, revised its procedures, adopted a new single-drug pentobarbital protocol in place of the previous three-drug method and installed new leadership to oversee the process.

Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Tobias Meyjes and James Debens