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Senior Judge Mark Ward ruled earlier this week that Tony Carruthers is competent to be executed despite testimony that the death row prisoner is consumed by psychotic delusions. Carruthers’ attorneys told the court in filings and at a recent hearing that their client believes he will soon be released, once the vast conspiracy that landed him on death row is exposed. In his ruling, however, Ward said that Carruthers’ testimony at the hearing showed him to be someone who understood his conviction and sentence but simply believed it was wrong. He is scheduled to be executed on May 21 for the murders and the kidnapping of Marcellos Anderson, his mother Delois, and Anderson’s friend Frederick Tucker. After running off six defense attorneys, Carruthers was made to represent himself at the 1996 trial. His attorneys said they plan to appeal Ward’s decision.
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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