TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Stacey Shrader Joslin on Mar 20, 2026

Senior Judge Mark Ward ruled earlier this week that death row inmate Tony Carruthers is competent to be executed. According to the Nashville Banner, Ward found that Carruthers’s testimony showed him to be someone who understood his conviction and sentence but simply believed it was wrong. Defense attorneys had argued that Carruthers is not competent because he is consumed by psychotic delusions that he is the victim of a vast conspiracy and will be released once that conspiracy is exposed. They said they plan to appeal Ward’s decision. Carruthers 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.