WASHINGTON (CN) - In a last-minute emergency order, the Supreme Court on Thursday refused to stop Tennessee's planned execution of a man fighting to prove his innocence in a triple murder.
Tony Carruthers was sentenced to death 30 years ago after being forced to represent himself at trial and without any physical evidence tying him to the crime. He filed a last-minute emergency appeal seeking an execution stay from the high court, claiming that untested DNA and fingerprint evidence could exonerate him.
Carruthers, now 59, and an accomplice were found guilty of kidnapping, torturing and burying alive Delois Anderson, her son Marcellos Anderson and a friend, Frederick Tucker, in 1994.
During his 1996 trial, a judge found that Carruthers had impliedly waived his right to appointed counsel. Carruthers' attorneys said his pro se defense was so catastrophic and prejudicial that his co-defendant's convictions and death sentences were reversed.
One prejudicial action included Carruthers calling Alfredo Shaw to testify. Shaw had claimed Carruthers confessed to him. But unbeknownst to Carruthers and the jury, Shaw was a paid informant for Tennessee. In a television interview before the trial began, Shaw admitted the police pressured and paid him to testify falsely.
After he was convicted, Carruthers appealed and sought DNA testing of a blanket found with the victims' bodies. An expert witness for Carruthers' co-defendant, James Montgomery, determined the DNA on the blanket didn't belong to either man.
Tennessee offered Montgomery a plea deal based on the DNA testing, and he was subsequently released in 2015.
Under state law, mandatory post-conviction DNA testing must be conducted if a reasonable probability exists that the defendant would not have been prosecuted or convicted if exculpatory results had been obtained during their trial.
But Carruthers' lawyers said his requests for DNA testing have been denied by Tennessee courts based on arbitrary and irrational constructions of federal and state rules. They compared his case to Richard Glossip, an Oklahoma man who was released from prison last week after the Supreme Court ordered a new trial in light of prosecutorial misconduct in his decades-old conviction.
"Unfortunately, our system gets it wrong sometimes," Carruthers' lawyers wrote, noting that both Carruthers and Glossip have maintained their innocence throughout their convictions and sentences.
Carruthers' case has garnered attention across the country, with over 130,000 people signing a petition to Tennessee Governor Bill Lee demanding the execution be stopped. However, Lee has refused to do so, setting his execution for Thursday.
Source: Courthouse News Service
