TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Julia Wilburn on May 8, 2026

Tony Carruthers, convicted in 1994 for three murders in Tennessee, is scheduled to be executed on May 21, with his attorneys now seeking clemency from Gov. Bill Lee on the grounds of serious trial injustices. WSMV reports that his conviction rested entirely on circumstantial evidence, including testimony from a secretly paid informant who publicly stated before trial that police paid him to testify — which the state later confirmed. The co-defendant, James Montgomery, has since told federal investigators that Carruthers was not involved and that a third party committed the murders, yet untested DNA and non-matching fingerprint evidence has never been fully examined. Two jurors have signed statements saying they would not have voted for the death penalty had they known the then-undisclosed information, and Carruthers reportedly had no legal representation at trial, meaning his execution would be the first of a counsel-denied defendant in over a century. Read more in a statement from the Office of the Federal Public Defender for the Middle District of Tennessee.