The fate of a man scheduled to be executed in Tennessee next week is now in the hands of Governor Bill Lee. Tony Caruthers’ legal team shared information about a clemency petition delivered to the governor. Caruthers was sentenced to death for the 1994 murders of a drug dealer, his mother, and a teenage friend in Memphis.
The clemency petition questions the testimony offered at Caruthers’ trial and claims there is no physical evidence linking Caruthers to the murders. His execution is set for May 21st at Riverbend Prison in Nashville. The governor has not issued a statement about the clemency petition.
“The time is always right to do what is right, Governor Lee. Moral action should never be delayed, and 32 years is way too long.”
Two weeks before the scheduled execution, there are calls for Governor Bill Lee to allow testing of unidentified fingerprint evidence that some believe could prove Caruthers’ innocence.
“I’m not going to be executed. I’m smiling. I’m happy because I’m going to be exonerated.”
Those are the words of a man sitting on death row. A man scheduled for execution in 6 days. A man the state of Tennessee has never connected to the crime through a single piece of physical evidence. And a man whose fate could be clarified by one DNA test. A test the state has refused to run for 30 years.
His story starts right now. Tony Von Caruthers was not a stranger to the Tennessee criminal justice system. Before 1994, he had already served time for aggravated arson, aggravated assault and battery, and armed robbery. That record is not a footnote. It is the foundation the prosecution would later build its entire case on.
In the summer of 1993, while still behind bars, Carothers wrote two letters to a man named Jimmy Lee Mays Jr., a convicted felon from Memphis. In those letters, he described what he called a master plan, one he said was a winner. He wrote that he intended to make those streets pay him. And then he wrote something that would later be read aloud in a courtroom.
“Everything I do from now on will be well organized and extremely violent.”
Those letters were entered into evidence at trial. While awaiting release at Mark Luttrell Reception Center in the fall of 1993, Carothers was assigned to a work detail at West Tennessee Veterans Cemetery. A fellow inmate later testified that after a burial, Carothers made a remark that a grave would be a good way to conceal someone you intended to harm.
On November 15th, 1993, Tony Von Carothers walked out of prison. His sister, Tonya Yvette Miller, a counselor at the Shelby County Adult Offender Center, later testified at sentencing that their mother raised four children alone in one of the most difficult housing projects in Memphis. That Tony, as the oldest son, was the man of the household. That context does not change what came next. But it is part of who he was before any of it began.
Marcelous Anderson was 21 years old. On the streets of North Memphis, people who knew him used one name, Shallow. He was involved in the drug trade. That is documented and not disputed. But court records also paint another side of him, a young man who extended trust to people he considered close, sometimes without question.
When Tony Von Carothers was released from prison on November 15th, 1993, it was Marcelous Anderson who showed up to collect him. He drove Caruthers to a friend’s house, and together with two other men from their North Memphis circle, Andre Johnson and Terrell Adair, Anderson handed Caruthers $200 in cash as a welcome home gesture. That detail is in the trial record.
Andre Johnson, known in the neighborhood as Baby Brother, was Anderson’s partner in the drug trade. He would later take the stand as a witness at trial. Terrell Adair moved in the same circle. Delois Anderson was 43 years old, Marcelos’s mother. She had no part in her son’s street life, none. She would be taken from her own home. Frederick Tucker was 17, a teenager, a friend of Marcelos’s with no known involvement in anything criminal. Three people, three completely different connections to what was about to happen.
By December 1993, the pieces were already moving. A fellow inmate named Smith, who had served time alongside both Tony Von Caruthers and James Montgomery, was released from prison that month. One of the first things he did was find Marcelos Anderson and Andre Johnson. He told them directly that Caruthers and Montgomery were planning to rob them. Anderson did not take the warning seriously. That decision would define everything that followed.
Mid-December 1993, Jimmy Lee Mayes Jr. was riding through Memphis with Caruthers and his brother when they came across the scene of a drive-by shooting outside Delois Anderson’s home. Terrell Adair had been hit and was taken to the hospital. Jonathan Montgomery, known as Lulu, James’s younger brother, was also at the scene. According to Mayes’s later testimony at trial, Caruthers turned to Jonathan Montgomery and said:
“It would be the best time to kidnap Marcelos.”
Jonathan responded:
“Which one, Baby Brother or Marcelos?”
Caruthers said it would happen after James got out. On December 31st, Mayes Caruthers loading three antifreeze containers into a car. Caruthers told him they were filled with gasoline. January 11th, 1994. James Montgomery was released from prison. He located Andre Johnson and made his position clear. He told Johnson the neighborhood belonged to him. When Johnson refused to respond, Montgomery said:
“You need to get in line around here or we’re going to war.”
Through late January and into early February, witnesses would later place Caruthers and James Montgomery together near the neighborhood on multiple occasions. They were not passing through. February 24th, 1994 is the day everything changed. Witnesses place Marcelos Anderson and Frederick Tucker traveling in a Jeep Cherokee alongside James and Jonathan Montgomery during the day. That evening around 5:00 p.m., the four men arrive at the North Memphis home of Nikita Shaw, the Montgomery brothers’ cousin. Also present that evening are Benton West, another cousin, and Shaw’s four young children.
All four men go downstairs into the basement. A short time later, James Montgomery comes back up alone. He approaches Nikita Shaw and asks her to leave the house for a while. He tells her he has business to handle. Shaw later told investigators she felt something was wrong. She left. Benton West stayed behind to look after her children.
Delois Anderson is not at that house. According to the state’s theory, she is taken separately directly from her own home. Two details support this. She left without her purse, and when her niece called the house that evening, someone answered the phone. The state concluded someone was inside the property after she was removed.
The following morning, February 25th, at around 8:30 a.m., a man named Hines gets his car back. It is described as very muddy. He drives James Montgomery and Carothers to Montgomery’s mother’s home. Later that same morning, Jonathan Montgomery, described by Hines as visibly on edge and unable to settle, makes a statement Hines would never forget. Jonathan tells him directly:
“They had to take care of some people.”
That same morning, Delois Anderson’s niece realizes neither her aunt nor Marcelos has returned home. She contacts authorities and files a missing person report. Seven days of silence follow. For seven days there was nothing. No calls. No sightings. No word from anyone.
Then on March 3rd, 1994, Jonathan Montgomery led Detective Jack Ruby of the Memphis Police Department to Rose Hill Cemetery on Elvis Presley Boulevard in Memphis. He did not lead him to an unmarked area. He directed him to a specific grave, the burial site of a woman named Dorothy Daniels, who had been interred there on February 25th, 1994. One day after Marcelos Anderson, Delois Anderson, and Frederick Tucker were last seen. Her grave sat six plots away from the burial site of the Montgomery brothers’ cousin.
A cemetery employee later testified that a pressed wood box had been placed inside Daniels’ grave during working hours on February 24th, and that moving it would have required at least two people. A court order was obtained. The grave was opened. Beneath the casket, under several inches of dirt and a single piece of plywood, investigators found all three of them.
Delois Anderson was at the bottom. The two male victims were positioned above her. Medical examiner Dr. O.C. Smith documented what was present. All three had their hands secured behind their backs with cloth ties. Frederick Tucker’s feet were also bound. There was marking on Tucker’s neck consistent with a ligature. A red sock was knotted around Delois Anderson’s neck. Marcelo Anderson had no jewelry and no cash on his person. Also recovered from within the grave was a cloth with significant staining.
Separately, investigators collected fingerprints from doorknobs and a phone receiver at the home where the state believed the abduction had taken place. Those fingerprints did not match a single person charged in this case. The jury would never be told that.
Jonathan Montgomery’s cooperation pointed investigators directly toward two men, James Montgomery and Tony Von Caruthers. Both were arrested. Before his own case could go to trial, Jonathan Montgomery was found unresponsive in his jail cell. His death was ruled a suicide. That left two defendants and a prosecution that needed to build its case from the ground up.
The foundation of that case rested almost entirely on one man, Alfredo Shaw, registered confidential informant designation number 2282, had contacted Crime Stoppers in March 1994 after seeing news coverage of the disappearances. He gave a statement to police and later appeared before a grand jury where he claimed that Tony Von Caruthers had personally confessed to him that he planned and directed the entire operation. That grand jury testimony is the primary reason Caruthers was indicted. Both men were formally charged with three counts of first-degree premeditated murder and four counts of especially aggravated kidnapping. The prosecution sought the death penalty for both.
Then something happened that the jury would never find out about. On February 28th, 1996, before the trial began, Alfredo Shaw sat down for a televised interview with Channel 13 News in Memphis. On camera, he stated that his grand jury testimony was not true. He said it had been given under pressure and in exchange for payment from law enforcement. Assistant District Attorney Jerry Harris was later named in court filings as the prosecutor who had briefed Shaw on the details of the case before that grand jury appearance. The trial went forward anyway.
The trial of Tony Von Carruthers and James Montgomery opened in April 1996 before Judge Joseph Daily in Shelby County Criminal Court. But the most consequential moment of the entire proceeding had already taken place before a single witness was called. In the months leading up to trial, Carruthers had worked through six court-appointed attorneys. He dismissed some. He accused others of working against him. Post-conviction attorneys would later argue this pattern was not defiance. It was the direct result of documented mental illness that the court consistently misread as deliberate obstruction.
In January 1996, Judge Daily ruled that Carruthers had forfeited his right to legal representation. What happened immediately after that ruling is documented in court records. Carruthers offered to take his most recent attorney back. That attorney was prepared to continue. Carruthers offered to apologize and formally withdraw every complaint he had filed. Judge Daily refused. He concluded that Carruthers was attempting to delay the proceedings. Three days later, the prosecution submitted a request for a 3-month postponement because one of their witnesses was unavailable. Judge Daily granted it. Carruthers formally requested an attorney again. Daily denied it again.
Tony Von Carruthers went to trial alone. No legal counsel. No courtroom experience. The counts of murder, four counts of especially aggravated kidnapping, his life on the line. The prosecution called Jimmy Lee Mays Jr., who testified about the letters Caruthers had written from prison and the conversation he witnessed in December 1993. Hines also testified, placing the muddy car and the conduct of James and Jonathan Montgomery in the hours following the disappearances.
Then came Alfredo Shaw. Caruthers called Shaw as a defense witness. His calculation was straightforward. Shaw had already told a television station his grand jury testimony was false. Caruthers believed putting Shaw on the stand would expose the weakness in the state’s case. Instead, prosecutors informed Shaw that repeating his recantation under oath would result in two counts of aggravated perjury charges. Shaw returned to his original testimony. When Caruthers attempted to ask Shaw directly whether he had been a paid government informant, a question central to his credibility, the prosecution objected. Judge Daley sustained it. The jury never heard the answer.
Dr. O.C. Smith testified regarding his autopsy conclusions. Caruthers did not challenge that testimony. He did not call Dr. Cleveland Blake, a forensic expert who had reviewed the same evidence at the trial court’s own request and reached a different conclusion. Blake was available. He was never called.
At sentencing, Bishop Richard Al Fidler, a prison minister who had visited Caruthers for 20 years, testified to his character. Caruthers’ sister, Tanya Yvette Miller, testified about their upbringing. Was not enough. On April 26th, 1996, the jury returned its verdict. Tony Von Carruthers was found guilty on all three counts of first-degree murder. He was also convicted on four counts of especially aggravated kidnapping, each carrying a 40-year sentence. The murder convictions carried the possibility of death.
At the sentencing phase, Shelby County prosecutor Bobby Carter stood before the jury and said:
“If these murders don’t qualify for the death penalty, then none ever will.”
The jury agreed. Three death sentences were handed down, one for each victim. Marcelos Anderson, Delois Anderson, Frederick Tucker. James Montgomery was convicted on all three murder counts at the same proceeding and also sentenced to death.
One fact places this verdict in a wider context. Shelby County accounts for nearly half of Tennessee’s entire death row population, while representing less than 14% of the state’s total population. Since 2001, only eight of Tennessee’s 95 counties have imposed sustained death sentences. This case came from one of those eight.
The convictions were handed down in 1996, but the legal story did not end there. In 2000, a Tennessee appeals court reviewed the joint trial and reached a significant conclusion. Carruthers’ self-representation had directly affected James Montgomery’s ability to receive a fair trial. The joint proceeding was ruled improper. Montgomery was granted a new trial.
That same year, the state approached Tony Von Carruthers with an offer, a life sentence in exchange for a guilty plea. He refused. He has maintained his innocence from the day of his arrest. In 2006, James Montgomery accepted an Alford plea, a legal arrangement where a defendant does not admit guilt, but acknowledges the state has sufficient evidence to convict. His sentence was set at 27 years with credit for time already served. He walked out of prison in 2015.
When that release became public, the families of Marcelos Anderson, Delois Anderson, and Frederick Tucker came forward. They stated they had received no notification of any proceedings connected to Montgomery’s release. The county prosecutor responded that notification was not his responsibility. The state noted the families had not enrolled in the victim notification system. No one had informed them that enrollment was required.
Tony Von Carruthers remained on death row. In 2010 and 2011, James Montgomery gave sworn statements to members of Carruthers’ federal defense team. In those statements, Montgomery said that Carruthers had no involvement in the kidnapping or the crimes. He stated that he planned and carried out the operation himself and that he directed a man known as Ronnie Eyeball Irving to take Delois Anderson separately from her home.
In 2005, forensic expert Dr. Cleveland Blake testified at a post-conviction hearing. His professional conclusion was that the three victims were already deceased before they were placed in that grave. Following that testimony, Dr. OC Smith, the original medical examiner, walked back his earlier conclusion. Two members of the original jury subsequently signed sworn declarations stating that had they known the victims were not alive when placed in the grave, they would not have voted for the death penalty.
In 2018, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reviewed the case and upheld the conviction. But the three judge panel included a pointed observation in its written opinion.
“Nothing in this opinion is intended to bless the state trial court’s actions.”
On the matter of the forced self-representation, the panel used one word, “troubling.”
30 years of post-conviction investigation produced four specific documented evidentiary issues. Each one is factual. Each one points to the same question. Why has the state refused to run forensic tests that could resolve this case definitively?
The first issue is the fingerprints. Investigators recovered fingerprints from Delois Andersons home, from door knobs and a phone receiver, exactly where anyone involved in the abduction would have made contact. Six separate profiles were developed. Not one matched Tony Von Carruthers, James Montgomery, or any other person charged in this case. The jury was never told. ACLU interim legal director Lucas Cameron Von addressed this directly. None of those fingerprints matched Tony. To this day, they remain unidentified.
The second issue is the DNA. A white blanket recovered from the grave was tested and produced an unknown male DNA profile. The bindings on Marcelos Andersons and Delois Andersons have never been tested. Fingernail scrapings from all three victims remain in the custody of the Shelby County medical examiner, untested. DNA expert Allan Keel, who has worked on cases across 36 states, reviewed the available evidence and confirmed in a 2026 affidavit that the material is still viable for analysis. Ronnie Eyeball Irvings DNA profile is on file. No comparison has ever been run.
The third issue is the medical testimony. Dr. OC Smith’s conclusion that the victims were alive when placed in the grave was cited three times by the Tennessee Supreme Court in its year 2000 proportionality review. That conclusion was later disputed by Dr. Cleveland Blake, subsequently walked back by Smith himself, and challenged formally by the defense. Two jurors confirmed in writing that this testimony directly shaped their decision on sentencing.
The fourth issue is the informant. Alfredo Shaw, confidential informant number 2282, received payment from the Memphis Police Department, the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office, and federal agencies across multiple cases. He recanted his testimony publicly before trial. At trial, he was pressured back to his original account under the threat of perjury charges. For 30 years, the state maintained no knowledge of his informant status. In August 2024, following the election of a reform-minded district attorney in Shelby County, more than 20 pages of documentation confirming Shaw’s designation were disclosed for the first time. Former Deputy Jailer Bernard Kimmons, prosecuted in part based on Shaw’s information, stated:
“We’re not the only ones he’s done this to.”
Four issues, 30 years, not one resolved. By early 2026, Caruthers’ legal team had opened a second front, one that had nothing to do with the events of 1994. The question was whether Tony Von Caruthers was mentally competent to face execution at all. He has been formally diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type. Court records also document brain damage. According to his attorneys, he holds fixed beliefs that do not respond to reason or evidence, including the conviction that his judges, prosecutors, and his own defense team are coordinating against him. He reportedly does not believe his execution date is real. He has contacted the Federal Public Defender’s Office as many as 300 times in a single day.
On February 13th, 2026, his attorneys filed a formal petition to have him declared incompetent. The trial court appointed two mental health professionals, Dr. Bhushan Agarkar and Dr. Thomas Schacht, to evaluate him. The hearing ran from March 9th through March 12th. On March 16th, Senior Judge W. Mark Ward ruled him competent. The governing legal standard comes from Ford versus Wainwright in 1986 and Panetti versus Quarterman in 2007. Both holding that a person must rationally understand the connection between their conviction and their punishment before a sentence can be carried out. The Tennessee Supreme Court rejected the appeal. A petition was filed at the United States Supreme Court on May 13th, 2026. It remains pending.
By April 2026, every available legal avenue was being pursued at the same time. On April 9th, the ACLU filed an emergency motion in the Tennessee Supreme Court demanding DNA testing on evidence that had never been analyzed. The court denied it. The ACLU filed immediately in federal court. On April 20th, lead defense attorney Amy Harwell submitted a formal clemency petition to Governor Bill Lee. The petition documented each issue in full, the concealed informant, the contested medical testimony, the untested DNA, and the fact that Carruthers had been forced to represent himself without legal counsel in a capital case.
On April 28th, a federal civil rights complaint was filed against multiple law enforcement agencies, including the Shelby County Criminal Court Clerk’s office and the Shelby County District Attorney’s office. On May 4th, a second emergency motion for a stay was filed in federal court alongside a renewed request for DNA testing. Nearly 30,000 people signed the ACLU’s public petition. The Tennessee Innocence Project joined the effort. ACLU Senior Counsel Maria De Liberato stated:
“The state of Tennessee cannot execute a man unless it is absolutely sure that he is guilty.”
Faith leaders, legal advocates, and three people who had previously been sentenced to death before being formally exonerated, Ray Conover Arizona, Sabrina Butler Smith, and Don Alatani of Memphis, gathered at the Tennessee State Capitol and delivered the petition directly to the governor’s office. Amnesty International formally declared the planned action a violation of international human rights law.
Governor Bill Lee has not granted clemency in a capital case during his time in office. Federal courts are still considering active motions. The United States Supreme Court petition remains pending.
Two positions sit on opposite sides of this case. Both are documented. Both are real. The state of Tennessee’s position has not changed. A jury of 12 people heard the evidence in 1996 and returned a unanimous verdict. Courts at every level, state courts, federal courts, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, have reviewed the record and allowed the conviction to stand. The appeals process has been thorough. The sentence in the state’s view is lawful.
The defense’s position is equally specific. No physical evidence has ever placed Tony Von Carothers at the scene of this crime. His conviction rests on the testimony of a paid informant whose status was concealed for 30 years. The medical testimony that influenced the death penalty vote was later disputed and walked back. Six fingerprints matched no one. DNA on key evidence remains untested. The man facing these consequences was never given a lawyer. Both of these things are true at the same time.
Three people lost their lives in Memphis, Tennessee in February 1994. Marcellus Anderson, Deloise Anderson, Frederick Tucker. Their deaths were real. Their families have carried this for 30 years. That is not in dispute and it should not be minimized.
On May 21st, 2026 at 10:00 in the morning, the state of Tennessee is scheduled to escort Tony Von Caruthers to the chamber at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Tennessee. If that proceeds, he will be the 17th person to receive a state sentence of that nature in Tennessee in the past 50 years. He will also be, according to legal scholars who have reviewed the full record, the first person in more than a century to face that outcome in the United States after having been forced to represent himself at a capital murder trial.
The DNA evidence that could clarify the question of his guilt or innocence has never been tested. The state has declined to run it. After Thursday morning, that question will no longer be relevant. In a justice system built on the principle that it is better for 10 guilty people to go free than for one innocent person to be wrongly held accountable, how certain does certain need to be?
