JUST IN: Tony Carruthers Scheduled For Execution (05/21/26) – Buried 3 People Alive In A Cemetery
I’m not going to be executed because this is a Roach. And I’m smiling, I’m happy because I’m going to be exonerated. On May 21st, 2026 at exactly 10:00 in the morning, the state of Tennessee is scheduled to carry out the execution of a man named Tony Von Carothers at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, 7475 Cockrill Bend Boulevard, Nashville, Tennessee.
He will be offered a final meal. He will be permitted final words. And then the state will carry out a sentence that was handed down 30 years ago. Tony Carothers was convicted of three murders in Memphis, Tennessee in 1996. He has been on death row ever since. His case has attracted national attention, not because it is straightforward, but because it is anything but.
On one side, a state that says justice was served, that a jury of 12 people heard the evidence, deliberated, and reached a verdict. That three people lost their lives in one of the most brutal ways imaginable. And that their deaths deserve to be answered for. On the other, defense attorneys, civil rights organizations, and death row exonerates who say the case is riddled with unanswered questions.
That evidence was concealed. That the trial was compromised. That a man may be executed without the state ever testing physical evidence that could settle the question of guilt once and for all. Both sides are about to be heard in courts across Tennessee. This is the story of what happened and what is about to happen. Stay with me.
Memphis, Tennessee, February 1994. Three people vanish. Marcellos Anderson, 21 years old, known on the street as Cello. His mother, Delois Anderson, 43 years old, and Marcelo’s teenage friend, Frederick Tucker, just 17 years old. They are reported missing. A week passes. No word. Then, on March 3rd, 1994, investigators are led to Rose Hill Cemetery on Elvis Presley Boulevard in Memphis.
They dig beneath an existing casket under several inches of dirt and a single piece of plywood. They find all three of them. The hands of every victim were bound behind their backs. Frederick Tucker’s feet were also bound and there was bruising around his neck consistent with a ligature. A red sock was found around Delois Anderson’s neck.
The medical examiner, Dr. O.C. Smith, performed the autopsies. His findings were detailed and grim. Marcelo’s Anderson had been shot three times, once to the forehead, twice in the neck. One of those neck wounds severed his spinal cord, paralyzing him from the neck down. The wound was not instantly fatal. Frederick Tucker had been shot and the force of compression from the burial contributed to his death.
Delois Anderson died from asphyxia caused by the position of her body and dirt in her mouth. Dr. Smith’s conclusion, all three victims were alive when they were buried. That finding would become the central, most contested piece of medical evidence in this entire case. In the grave with the victims, a blanket-like cloth soaked in blood.
And on the walls of the house where investigators believe the abduction took place, fingerprints. Investigators build a theory of the crime based on witness accounts and physical evidence. Marcelo’s Anderson, according to authorities, was involved in the drug trade in North Memphis. The state alleged that Tony Caruthers, a man from the same neighborhood, wanted to take over that territory.
On February 24th, 1994, the day the victims disappeared, witnesses saw Marcelous Anderson and Frederick Tucker in a Jeep Cherokee with two brothers, James and Jonathan Montgomery. That evening, the group arrived at the home of Nikita Shaw, the Montgomery brothers’ cousin. They went into the basement. A short time later, James Montgomery came back upstairs and told Shaw to leave because he needed to take care of some business.
Shaw later said she believed something was wrong. She left. The state’s theory, Tony Caruthers and James Montgomery planned the kidnapping of Marcelous Anderson to rob him and remove him as competition. Deloyce Anderson and Frederick Tucker were, in the prosecution’s framing, in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The three victims were bound, transported, and buried in a grave beneath an existing casket at Rose Hill Cemetery. A week later, Jonathan Montgomery, one of the brothers, led police directly to that grave. Before his own trial could begin, Jonathan Montgomery was found hanged in his jail cell.
That left two men facing charges, James Montgomery and Tony Von Caruthers. Both men were arrested, indicted, and charged with three counts of first-degree premeditated murder. These were among the most serious charges a court can bring. If convicted, both men faced the death penalty. The prosecution’s case against Tony Caruthers rested on several pillars.
Witness testimony placing him in connection with the Montgomery’s and the drug territory dispute. The testimony of Albert Shaw, a man who said Caruthers had arranged the killings. And the broader narrative of motive that Caruthers orchestrated the abduction to consolidate control over the drug trade in that part of Memphis.
The defense then and now has maintained that Caruthers was not involved, that he was not present at the crime scene, and that the evidence against him was circumstantial and unreliable. What happened next, before the trial even began, would become a defining issue in the legal fights that followed. The trial of Tony Von Caruthers and James Montgomery took place in 1996.
In the lead-up to trial, Caruthers went through six court-appointed attorneys. Some he dismissed, some he accused of working against him. Requests for a seventh attorney were denied by the court. The presiding judge ruled that Caruthers would represent himself. Caruthers had documented mental health issues, a fact that was known to the court.
His later post-conviction attorneys argued that his dismissal of counsel was a direct result of his mental illness, not a genuine informed choice to go pro se. The state has maintained that the court followed proper legal procedure, that Caruthers had been given ample counsel, and that the court was not obligated to continue appointing new attorneys indefinitely.
Regardless of how one views that decision, the trial proceeded with Caruthers representing himself, unassisted, in a capital case. He cross-examined witnesses, challenged the state’s narrative, and argued his own case. By most accounts, including those of his own later attorneys, he was not effective in that role.
One of the most significant moments in the trial came during the medical examiner’s testimony. Dr. O.C. Smith testified that the victims had been buried alive. It was the most viscerally disturbing claim in the entire prosecution. And Carruthers, whether due to his mental state, his lack of legal training, or his focus on denying any presence at the scene, did not challenge it.
He did not call a forensic expert to dispute it. He did not cross-examine Dr. Smith on that specific point. The jury heard the buried alive conclusion without any counter testimony. On April 26th, 1996, the jury convicted Tony Von Carruthers on all three counts of first-degree murder. At the sentencing phase, prosecutor Bobby Carter told the jury, “If these murders don’t qualify for the death penalty, then none ever will.
” The jury returned three death sentences, one for each victim. After the convictions, the legal process continued for both men. In 2000, an appeals court ruled that Carruthers and Montgomery should have been tried separately. The joint trial, the court determined, had been improper. Montgomery was granted a new trial.
He accepted a plea agreement, 27 years, and was released from prison in 2015. Tony Carruthers remained on death row. In 2010, while still serving out his sentence, James Montgomery gave a statement to an investigator. In that statement, he said that Tony Carruthers was not involved in the kidnapping or the murders.
He said that he had carried out the kidnapping himself, and that he had sent a man named Ronnie Eyeball Irving to abduct Delois Anderson. That statement has been central to Caruthers’ post-conviction legal efforts. It is worth noting, James Montgomery is a convicted murderer who accepted a plea deal.
His statement was made years after the fact. Courts have considered his account and have not found it to be sufficient to overturn Caruthers’ conviction. The prosecution and the state have continued to maintain that the conviction was sound and that the evidence presented at trial was sufficient to support it. Over the years, several evidentiary issues have become central to the debate over this case.
We’ll lay them out as factually as possible because the interpretation of each one depends heavily on who you ask. First, the fingerprints. Fingerprints were recovered from the house where investigators believe the abduction took place. Those fingerprints have never matched Tony Caruthers, James Montgomery, or any other person charged in the case.
The defense argues this points to an unidentified perpetrator. The state has argued that the absence of a match does not mean Caruthers wasn’t involved, only that unidentified prints were found at a location where multiple people may have been. Second, the DNA. There is an unidentified male DNA profile on fabric found in the grave.
It has not been tested against the alternative suspect named by Montgomery, Ronnie Irving, who was killed in 2002, but whose DNA and fingerprints are on file. The defense has sought DNA testing. The state has opposed it. A Tennessee court denied the testing request, reasoning that even if the the pointed elsewhere, they would not conclusively exclude Caruthers’ participation in the crime.
Third, the medical examiner’s buried alive conclusion. This is one of the most debated points in the entire case. In 1996, Dr. OC Smith testified that the victims were alive when buried. A conclusion the jury heard without challenge. But in 2005, forensic expert Dr. Cleveland Blake testified that in his opinion, the victims were already dead before being placed in the grave. And Dr.
Smith later backed away from his original conclusion. Two jurors have since said they would not have supported the death penalty had they known that. None of that information was available to the jury in 1996. Fourth, the informant. The state’s key witness, Albert Shaw, testified that Caruthers arranged the killings. But in August 2024, 30 years after the trial, the state disclosed documents showing Shaw had been a paid confidential informant, a fact never revealed to the defense.
The state has not publicly explained why the information was withheld, maintaining only that the conviction was properly obtained. Whether these issues amount to constitutional violations is now being decided in court. As the execution date approached, another legal issue moved to the foreground. In February 2026, Caruthers’ attorneys filed a motion arguing that he cannot legally be executed due to his mental illness.
He has been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type. His attorneys describe a man with deeply entrenched delusional beliefs, including the conviction that judges, prosecutors, and even his own defense attorneys are part of a long-running conspiracy against him. He reportedly believes his execution date is not real, but rather a pressure tactic to force him into waving legal rights.
He has, according to his attorneys, called the Federal Public Defender’s Office as many as 300 times in a single day. The legal standard here comes from two Supreme Court decisions. Ford versus Wainwright in 1986 and Panetti versus Quarterman in 2007. Under those rulings, the 8th Amendment prohibits executing someone who cannot rationally understand the connection between their crime and their punishment.
The defense says Caruthers meets that standard for incompetency. In March 2026, a Memphis judge disagreed, ruling that Caruthers is legally competent to be executed. The state has maintained that he understands his conviction and the sentence attached to it, and that the legal threshold for incompetency has not been met. That ruling is currently under appeal in a higher court.
With the execution now days away, multiple legal battles are playing out simultaneously. On April 9th, 2026, attorneys from the ACLU filed an emergency motion in the Tennessee Supreme Court seeking DNA testing on evidence that has never been tested. They argued the results could be critical to determining whether the right man was convicted.
The Tennessee Supreme Court denied the motion. The court’s stated reasoning, “The results of such testing would not, by themselves, exclude Caruthers from having participated in the crime.” The ACLU has taken that denial to federal court. On April 20th, 2026, a formal clemency petition was submitted to Governor Bill Lee, urging him to halt the execution.
On April 28th, Caruthers’ legal team filed a federal motion to stay the execution along with a civil rights complaint against multiple law enforcement agencies. A public petition gathered roughly 30,000 signatures. Three individuals who were once sentenced to death and later exonerated, Ray Krone of Arizona, Sabrina Butler Smith and Ndume Olatushani of Memphis, held a press conference calling on the governor to intervene.
Amnesty International has called the planned execution a violation of international human rights standards. Prosecutors and state officials have not publicly wavered. Their position has been consistent. The conviction was lawful, the appeals process has been exhaustive, and the sentence should be carried out. Governor Bill Lee has not granted clemency in a capital case during his time in office.
If no court intervenes, if all remaining legal motions are denied, and the governor takes no action, on May 21st, 2026 at 10:00 in the morning, Tony Von Caruthers will be escorted to the execution chamber at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Tennessee. He will be offered a final meal. He will be permitted to make a final statement.
The method of execution will be lethal injection, though Tennessee law provides the option of the electric chair under certain circumstances. His death would be the 17th execution carried out in Tennessee in the past half century. He would be, according to legal scholars who have reviewed the record, the first person in more than a century to be executed in the United States after having been forced to represent himself at a capital murder trial.
This case sits at the intersection of several of the most difficult questions in the American legal system. On one side of this debate are three victims whose deaths were brutal, real, and documented in extraordinary detail. Marcelos Anderson, Delois Anderson, Frederick Tucker. A jury heard the evidence in 1996 and reached a unanimous verdict.
Appeals courts have reviewed the case multiple times over 30 years. A judge reviewed the mental competency claim and found it did not meet the legal threshold. A state Supreme Court reviewed the DNA testing request and denied it. The state of Tennessee and its courts have at every stage concluded that the conviction is sound.
On the other side, the defense has raised issues that are not easily dismissed. The execution of Tony Von Caruthers is scheduled for May 21st, 2026. As of today, federal courts are still weighing emergency motions. A clemency petition has been submitted to the governor. The question of mental competency remains in the appeals process.
Whether any of that changes the outcome, we don’t yet know. What is certain is this. A jury in 1996 convicted a man of three murders. That man has been on death row for 30 years. The evidence in this case has been challenged, re-examined, and disputed in courts at multiple levels. And the courts have so far allowed the sentence to stand.
Some people look at this case and see justice about to be carried out, delayed by decades of appeals in a system designed to be thorough. Others look at the same case and see unresolved doubt in a situation where doubt once acted upon cannot be undone. The death penalty is final. That is not an argument for or against it. It is simply the reality of what May 21st represents.
So, here is the question this case leaves us with. In a justice system built on the idea that it is better for 10 guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to be wrongly punished, how certain does certain need to be?
