On March 3, 1994, the bodies of Marcelos “Cello” Anderson, his mother, Delois Anderson, and Frederick Tucker were found buried under a coffin in a Memphis cemetery. They had been missing for a week after being kidnapped from Delois Anderson’s home.
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Inside the grave with the body was a “blanket-like cloth” stained with blood. Fingerprints were left behind at home. Investigators were guided to the grave by a man named Jonathan Montgomery, who led police to his brother, James Montgomery, and Tony Carruthers as suspects.
At trial, the state alleged that Carruthers and two co-defendants, James Montgomery and Jonathan Montgomery, kidnapped Marcelos Anderson for the purpose of robbery. Jonathan Montgomery was found hanged in his cell before his trial. Carruthers and James Montgomery were tried together. Both men 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 triple kidnapping and murder, but a new complaint filed by the American Civil Liberties Union says key DNA evidence from the crime scene does not match Carruthers’s, and reexamination could prove him innocent.
The post-conviction DNA testing motion, filed April 9 in Tennessee Supreme Court in Nashville, asks that another suspect Montgomery identified at the retrial be tested for fingerprints and other DNA evidence that do not match in the case.
“There has never been any physical evidence linking Mr. Carruthers to the crime, and the case against him was built on the testimony of prison informants, which is widely known to be one of the leading causes of wrongful convictions,” the ACLU said in an April 9 press release.
Fingerprints taken at the crime scene excluded both Carruthers and Montgomery, leaving six unidentified fingerprints, according to the complaint.
The motion says the jury in Carruthers’ case never heard about the fingerprint evidence because he was “forced to defend himself at trial.” A 2000 state Supreme Court opinion detailed why Mr. Carruthers was “necessary to represent himself at trial,” including his threatening behavior toward some of his attorneys. Carruthers ultimately retained six different lawyers to represent him, but his current lawyers have described him as an “incompetent, incompetent and miserable person,” pointing out his ongoing mental illness and saying at the time of his arrest that he was “mentally ill, irrational and incompetent to stand trial.”
Mr. Carruthers and Mr. Montgomery were both convicted and sentenced to death. The Court of Appeals subsequently found that Carruthers’ self-assertion deprived Montgomery of a fair trial. His conviction was overturned and a new trial granted.
During the retrial, Montgomery requested DNA testing of physical evidence from the kidnapping scene and graveyard, according to the ACLU’s motion.
“Testing did not reveal a DNA match on the evidence to Mr. Montgomery or Mr. Carruthers,” the motion said. “Most of the samples were either too small to create a profile with 2003 technology, were inconclusive, or did not match the victim. However, there was one profile of a burly man on a white blanket buried with the victim.”
That DNA sample remains unidentified, according to the motion.
The state asked Montgomery to plead to a reduced charge of three counts of second-degree murder.
The ACLU’s complaint alleges that while Montgomery is serving the remainder of his sentence, he makes statements “exonerating” Carruthers and points to other suspects.
“In 2010, while serving the remainder of his sentence, co-defendant James Montgomery made statements to Metropolitan Habeas Corpus agents indicating that he had kidnapped Ms. Marcellos and Mr. Fred and sent Ronnie ‘Eyeball’ Irving to kidnap Ms. Anderson. He confirmed to investigators that Mr. Carruthers was not involved in the kidnapping or murder,” the motion states.
Montgomery was released in 2016, but Irving was murdered in 2002.
“His fingerprints and DNA sample are on file at the coroner’s office,” the motion said. “To date, no unidentified physical evidence (potential fingerprints or unknown male DNA profile) has been compared to Mr. Irving.”
“The motion by itself is unlikely to affect the timing of the scheduled execution, as Mr. Carruthers anticipates that the DNA testing itself, if approved, would be completed before the May 21 execution date. However, if the DNA test results confirm Mr. Carruthers’ innocence or raise questions about the validity of the death sentence, Mr. Carruthers would move to halt the execution,” the motion states.
In addition to the ACLU’s motion for a DNA test, Carruthers also asked for a fingerprint test in the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals. The court rejected that appeal this week.
“The court does not find that there is a reasonable probability that petitioner would not have been indicted or convicted had the desired results been obtained through the requested fingerprint analysis,” the court wrote.
Since 1993, 34 people in 15 states have been exonerated from death row using DNA evidence, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Just recently, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the appeal of a man on Texas’ death row who argued that DNA testing could help prove his innocence.
