Tennessee man set to be executed files motion claiming DNA evidence will prove his innocence

On March 3, 1994, the bodies of Marcellos “Cello” Anderson, his mother, Delois Anderson, and Frederick Tucker were found buried in a Memphis cemetery under a coffin. They had been missing for a week after being kidnapped from Delois Anderson’s home.

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In the grave with the bodies was a “blanket-like cloth” covered in blood. Fingerprints were left at the house. Investigators were led to the grave by a man named Jonathan Montgomery, leading police to identify his brother, James Montgomery, and Tony Carruthers as suspects.

At trial, the State argued that Carruthers and his two co-defendants, James and Jonathan Montgomery, kidnapped Marcellos Anderson to rob him. Jonathan Montgomery was found hanging in his cell before his trial. Carruthers and James Montgomery were tried together. Both were convicted of three counts of first-degree premeditated murder and sentenced to death in 1996.

Tony Von Carruthers is scheduled to be executed next month for the triple kidnapping and murder, but a new petition filed by the American Civil Liberties Union claims that crucial DNA evidence from the crime scene does not match Carruthers and that new tests could prove his innocence.

The petition for post-conviction DNA testing filed with the Tennessee Supreme Court in Nashville on April 9 seeks to have fingerprints and other DNA evidence unmatched in the case tested against another suspect identified by Montgomery at his retrial.

“There has never been any physical evidence linking Mr. Carruthers to the crime and the case against him was built on the testimony of jailhouse informants, widely known to be a leading cause of wrongful convictions,” the ACLU said in an April 9 press release.

According to the motion, fingerprints collected at the crime scene excluded Carruthers and Montgomery, leaving behind six unidentified fingerprints.

The motion says the jury in Carruthers’ case never heard about the fingerprint evidence because it was “forced to represent itself at trial.” A 2000 state Supreme Court opinion recounts why Carruthers was “required to represent himself at trial”, including threatening behavior towards some of his lawyers. Carruthers ultimately had six different attorneys before representing himself in a performance his current attorneys called “incompetent, ineffective and disastrous,” noting ongoing mental illness and saying he was “mentally ill, irrational and incompetent to stand trial” at the time of his arrest.

Carruthers and Montgomery were convicted and sentenced to death. Later, an appeals court ruled that Montgomery was deprived of a fair trial because of Carruthers’ self-representation. His conviction was overturned and he was granted a new trial.

According to the ACLU’s motion, Montgomery requested DNA testing of physical evidence from the kidnapping scene and grave during his retrial.

“Testing did not reveal any DNA matches to Mr. Montgomery or Mr. Carruthers based on the evidence,” the motion states. “The majority of samples were either too small to produce a profile according to 2003 technology, inconclusive, or matched the victims. However, there was a robust male profile on a white blanket that was buried with the victims.”

That DNA sample remains unidentified, according to the motion.

The state offered Montgomery a plea to a reduced charge of three counts of second-degree murder.

The ACLU motion said that while serving the remainder of his sentence, Montgomery made a statement “exonerating” Carruthers and naming a different suspect.

“In 2010, co-defendant James Montgomery, while serving the remainder of his sentence, made a statement to a Capital Habeas Unit investigator indicating that he had kidnapped Marcellos and Fred and that he had sent Ronnie ‘Eyeball’ Irving to kidnap Ms. Anderson. He confirmed to the investigator that Mr. Carruthers was not involved in the kidnapping or murders,” the motion states.

Montgomery was released in 2016. Irving was assassinated in 2002.

“His fingerprints and a DNA sample are on file at the medical examiner’s office,” the motion states. “To date, the unidentified physical evidence (either the latent fingerprints or the unknown male DNA profile) has not been compared to that of Mr. Irving.”

“Mr. Carruthers anticipates that, if granted, the DNA testing itself will be completed prior to his May 21 execution date, so this request for testing, in itself, is unlikely to affect the timing of his scheduled execution. However, if the DNA results confirm Mr. Carruthers’ innocence or cast doubt on the propriety of his death sentence, Mr. Carruthers will move to stay his execution,” the motion states.

Along with the ACLU’s petition seeking DNA testing, Carruthers also requested fingerprint testing before the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals. The court rejected that appeal this week.

“The Court considers that there is no reasonable probability that the [P]Petitioner would not have been prosecuted or convicted if the desired results had been obtained through the requested fingerprint analysis,” the court wrote.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 34 people in 15 states have been exonerated from death row using DNA evidence since 1993. Most recently, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the appeal of a man on death row in Texas who said DNA testing could help prove his innocence.