Tony Von Carruthers v. State of Tennessee

Tony’s conviction was based on testimony from paid jailhouse informants, and there has never been physical evidence linking him to the crime. One of the people responsible for the murders said that Tony was not involved, and pointed investigators to a different man, Ronnie Irving.

There are unmatched fingerprints and DNA from the crime scene that we know don't match Tony. Those prints and DNA have never been compared to Irving’s. Before the state carries out an execution, it should answer the most basic question: did they get the right person? In this case, Tennessee has the evidence to help answer that question and must test it before they execute the wrong man.

In addition to the unidentified fingerprint evidence, there is unknown male DNA on a piece of fabric used to bind the victims. When the state ran DNA testing, the results excluded Tony and his co-defendant. The ACLU has filed a motion for DNA testing in Tennessee Supreme Court asking the state to compare the unknown male DNA to Irving and to do sampling of three additional items that have never been subject to testing.

Evidence at Trial

With no physical evidence linking Tony to the crime scene, the case against him is built on testimony from paid informants, which is widely known to be one of the leading causes of wrongful convictions. Alfredo Shaw, a career informant, testified to the Grand Jury that Tony confessed to him. That testimony was the main reason prosecutors were able to charge Tony at all. Shaw later recanted in a TV interview, saying the confession never happened.

At trial, prosecutors did not call Shaw as a witness. Tony, who had been denied counsel and forced to represent himself, called Shaw as part of his defense. Before Shaw testified, prosecutors threatened him with perjury charges if he contradicted his original Grand Jury testimony. Under that pressure, Shaw repeated the confession story to the jury.

The jury was not informed that Shaw had secretly been working as a paid informant for the state. During Shaw’s testimony, Tony directly asked him if he ever worked as a confidential informant. The prosecutor, knowing that Shaw was indeed a paid informant, objected to relevance, and the court sustained the objection. The State continued to deny that Shaw was a paid informant for the next three decades, until evidence uncovered in 2024 confirmed that the state had paid him. The sudden disclosure appeared to be due to the opening of a conviction integrity review unit within the state attorney’s office.

Tony's Self-Representation

Tony was forced to represent himself at trial after the trial court became frustrated with his repeated firing of appointed counsel. Tony never sought self-representation and repeatedly requested counsel.

Because Tony didn’t have a lawyer, key aspects of the prosecution’s case went unchallenged, including the circumstances surrounding Shaw's statements and his relationship with the state.

Tony's trial was so filled with errors due to his forced self-representation that on appeal the court found that his co-defendant, James Montgomery, deserved a new trial. Mr. Montgomery ultimately pleaded guilty, received a 27-year sentence, and was released in 2016.

If Tony is executed, he would be the first person in nearly a century to be put to death after being forced to represent himself at trial.

Untested Fingerprint and DNA Evidence

In 1994, investigators collected fingerprint evidence from Delois Anderson’s home, where the victims were kidnapped from. They recovered multiple prints from Ms. Anderson’s house in locations that the facts suggest the kidnapper would have touched: doorknobs and a phone receiver. None of the prints match Tony, and there is no other physical evidence tying him to the scene of the crime.

In 2010, James Montgomery gave a statement to an investigator that he had kidnapped Marcellos and Fred and that he had sent a man named Ronnie Irving to kidnap Ms. Anderson. In this statement, James confirms that Tony was not involved in the kidnapping or the murders. Irving, who was killed in 2002, had an extensive arrest history, and his fingerprints are on file with law enforcement. Irving’s fingerprints have never been compared to the unidentified prints recovered from the crime scene.

The jury was never told about the unidentified prints, that Tony's prints weren’t found at the house, or that prints from the person who is most likely responsible for the kidnapping were never compared.

To this day, there are still 6 unmatched fingerprints from the scene. In September 2021, Tony filed a pro se motion for fingerprint testing. In January 2026, after his execution date had been set, Tony’s lawyers filed a supplemental pleading, which included James Montgomery’s disclosure about Ronnie Irving as well as the State’s decades-long concealment of Alfredo’s Shaw’s status as a paid informant. The state court denied his request on the grounds that the testing could not exclude his participation. More troubling, the state court held that the new information about Alfredo Shaw as well as the statement implicating Ronnie Irving could not be considered, finding that Tennessee law limits defendants to the universe of information that was available at the time of trial or arrest.

The ACLU plans to file a Section 1983 challenge to Tennessee’s onerous scheme for post-conviction forensic testing and its refusal to consider the totality of evidence available, as a violation of due process in the Middle District of Tennessee.

In addition to the unidentified fingerprint evidence, there is unknown male DNA on a piece of fabric used to bind the victims. When the state ran DNA testing, the results excluded Tony and his co-defendant. The ACLU plans to file a motion for DNA testing in Tennessee Supreme Court asking the state to compare the unknown male DNA to Irving and to do sampling of three additional items that have never been subject to testing.