Tennessee is preparing to execute Tony Carruthers, whose defenders question trial fairness
This Tennessee Department of Corrections photo shows inmate Tony Carruthers. (Tennessee Department of Corrections via AP)
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee will execute Tony Carruthers on Thursday after his lawyers questioned whether the state’s lethal injection drugs had expired and courts rejected requests to test DNA and fingerprint evidence or rule him mentally incompetent.
Tony Carruthers, 57, was sentenced to death after being found guilty of the 1994 kidnapping and murder of Marcellos Anderson; his mother, Delois Anderson; and Frederick Tucker. He was forced to represent himself at the hearing by repeatedly complaining about court-appointed lawyers and threatening to harm many of them.
There was no physical evidence linking Carruthers to the murders, and Carruthers was convicted based primarily on the testimony of people who claimed to have heard him confess to or discuss the crimes.
These include a man who was later revealed to be a police informant and told the media he had been paid for his testimony. James Montgomery, one of the co-defendants, was originally sentenced to death She only later resented Carruthers and was released from prison in 2015, according to court records.
Authorities said Marcellos Anderson was a drug dealer and was trying to take over the illegal drug trade in Carruthers’ Memphis neighborhoods. His lawyers said Carruthers’ “paranoia and delusions” prevented him from cooperating with court-appointed counsel, but the judge said the behavior was intentional.
The Tennessee Supreme Court said on appeal that Carruthers’ actions before the trial jury were aggressive and self-destructive, but that the situation he found himself in was one of his own making. If the execution goes ahead as planned, Carruthers will be the first person to be executed after being forced to represent himself in more than a century, according to a clemency petition filed with Tennessee Governor Bill Lee.
In the petition, Carruthers’ attorneys argue that the reason Carruthers was sentenced to death was because a medical examiner testified that the victims were buried alive and went into excruciating detail for the jury. He later retracted this claim, and subsequent experts said it was false.
Carruthers’ lawyers tried to show that he was unfit to be executed. They allege in court filings that Carruthers believed the government was bluffing about executing him in an effort to force him to accept a plea deal he only had in mind. Carruthers believes that this way he can avoid paying the millions of dollars he thinks the government owes him. He believes his own lawyers are part of a conspiracy against him and refuses to even talk to them, according to court records.
The number of executions in the US rose from 25 in 2024 to 47 last year, driven by a sharp increase in Florida. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, there were 19 more executions carried out in the state in 2025, compared to the previous year. So far this year, 13 people have been executed in four states, and 11 more are scheduled to be executed.
It is not uncommon for multiple executions to occur within a short period of time. In March last year, four people were executed within three days in Oklahoma, Florida, Louisiana and Arizona. Five more people were executed within a week in October in Arizona, Mississippi, Missouri, Florida and Indiana, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Tennessee started new round of execution some time last year three year pause It follows the discovery that the state did not properly test lethal injection drugs for purity and potency.
One independent review It later found that none of the drugs prepared for the seven inmates executed in Tennessee since 2018 had been fully tested. The state attorney general also said in court that the two men most responsible for overseeing Tennessee’s lethal injection drugs ” wrong statement given He swore that officials tested the chemicals properly.
