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The American Civil Liberties Union is asking the Tennessee Supreme Court to order DNA testing that it argues could prove the innocence of Tony Carruthers before he is executed by the state on May 21.
Carruthers was convicted and sentenced to death for the kidnapping and murder of Marcellos Anderson, his mother Delois, and Anderson’s friend Frederick Tucker in 1996 after a trial in which he represented himself.
A judge in Memphis ruled last month that Carruthers is competent to be executed despite his attorneys’ claims that he is gripped by psychotic delusions about his case.
The motion filed by the ACLU last week cites unmatched fingerprints and DNA evidence that has not been compared to that of an alternative suspect. “Before the state carries out an irreversible punishment, it must answer the most basic question: did they get the right person?” Maria DeLiberato, senior counsel at the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project, said in a release. “Tennessee has the forensic evidence that could help answer that question, and they must test it before it is too late.”
This article first appeared on Nashville Banner and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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