NASHVILLE, TN– Tennessee is next scheduled to execute Tony Carruthers on Thursday his lawyers questioned Whether the state’s lethal injection drugs have expired and the courts have rejected requests for DNA testing and fingerprint evidence or deemed him mentally incompetent.
Tony Carruthers, 57, was sentenced to death after being convicted of the 1994 kidnapping and murder of Marcellus Anderson; His mother, Delois Anderson. And Frederick Tucker. He was forced to represent himself in court, where he repeatedly complained about the court-appointed lawyers and threatened to harm several of them.
There was no physical evidence linking Carruthers to the killings, and he was convicted primarily on the testimony of people who claimed to have heard him admit or discuss committing the crimes.
Among them was a man who later turned out to be a police informant and told the media that he had been paid for his testimony. The co-defendant, James Montgomery, was originally charged He was sentenced to death along with Carruthers, but was later re-sentenced and released from prison in 2015, according to court filings.
Marcellus Anderson was a drug dealer, and Carruthers was trying to control the illegal drug trade in the Memphis neighborhood, authorities said. His lawyers said Carruthers’ “paranoia and delusions” prevented him from cooperating with his court-appointed attorney, but the judge deemed the behavior intentional.
The Tennessee Supreme Court said on appeal that Carruthers’ actions before the jury were abusive and self-destructive, but that the situation he found himself in was of his own making. If the execution goes ahead as scheduled, Carruthers will be the first person executed after being forced to represent himself in more than a century, according to a clemency request filed by Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee.
In the petition, Carruthers’ attorneys say the reason he was sentenced to death is because the coroner testified that the victims were buried alive, which led to traumatic details for the jury. He later retracted this claim and subsequent experts said it was false.
Carruthers’ lawyers tried to prove that he was not fit to be executed. They claim in court filings that Carruthers believes the government is bluffing about his execution in order to force him to accept a plea deal that only exists in his mind. Carruthers believes that this way the government can avoid paying what he believes are millions of dollars owed to him. He is convinced his attorneys are part of a conspiracy against him and refuses to even talk to them, according to court filings.
number Executions In the United States, it rose from 25 in 2024 to 47 last year, driven by a sharp increase in Florida. That state carried out 19 executions in 2025, compared to one the previous year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. So far this year, four states have executed 13 people, and 11 more executions are scheduled, including one Thursday evening in Florida.
It is not unusual to see several executions within a short period of time. Last year, four people were executed over three days in March in Oklahoma, Florida, Louisiana and Arizona. Five more people were executed over the course of a week in October in Arizona, Mississippi, Missouri, Florida and Indiana, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Tennessee A’s started A new round of executions Last year after a Stopped for three years After discovering that the state was not properly testing lethal injection drugs for purity and potency.
that Independent review It later found that none of the drugs intended for the seven inmates executed in Tennessee since 2018 had been fully tested. The state Attorney General’s Office also acknowledged in court that two of the people most responsible for overseeing lethal injection drugs in Tennessee ” He testified incorrectly Under oath that officials were testing the chemicals as required.