The state of Tennessee has scheduled the execution of inmate Tony Carruthers for Thursday morning at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.
The execution proceeds despite ongoing claims from his legal team regarding his mental competency and the validity of evidence used in his 1994 conviction.
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Carruthers, 57, was sentenced to death for the 1994 kidnappings and triple homicides of Marcellos Anderson, Delois Anderson, and Frederick Tucker in Memphis.
Authorities said he committed the crimes while trying to control the local illegal drug trade, identifying Marcellos Anderson as a rival dealer.
The conviction relied primarily on witnesses who testified that Carruthers discussed or confessed to the homicides.
During the trial, Carruthers represented himself after repeatedly complaining about his court-appointed lawyers and threatening multiple attorneys.
If carried out, this will be the first US execution of an inmate forced to represent himself in over a century.
Legal representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union argued that Carruthers suffers from severe mental illness, including paranoia and delusions that prevented him from cooperating with his defense.
Earlier this week, a federal judge denied a request to delay the execution, matching the trial judge's initial assessment that the defendant's disruptive behavior was willful.
The Tennessee Supreme Court later affirmed that while Carruthers' actions before the jury were self-destructive and offensive, the legal situation was entirely self-inflicted.
Defense lawyers also argued that the death sentence resulted from a medical examiner testifying in excruciating detail that the three victims were buried alive.
The medical examiner later recanted that specific testimony, and subsequent medical experts determined the claim was false.
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Defense filings state that Carruthers remains incompetent for execution and genuinely believes the government is bluffing about the death penalty to force a fictional plea deal.
According to court documents, Carruthers believes this alleged government bluff aims to avoid paying him millions of dollars he thinks he is owed.
He remains convinced that his legal counsel is part of a conspiracy against him and refuses to speak with them.
Public protests emerged in the days leading up to the scheduled date, with activists petitioning Tennessee Governor Bill Lee to halt the execution.
The executive director of Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, the Rev. Stacy Rector, stated that the petitions gathered more than 100,000 signatures.
Additional legal challenges center on the purity and potency of the state's lethal injection drugs, following a prior three-year pause on executions that ended last year.
Defense attorneys twice requested confirmation from the Tennessee Department of Correction that the selected drugs were appropriate and had not expired.
Assistant Attorney General John Ayers did not directly answer the specific inquiries regarding drug expiration in his response.
He stated that the department would comply with the established lethal injection protocol.
Tennessee has faced repeated procedural issues regarding its execution substances over recent years.
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In 2022, Governor Lee issued a temporary reprieve for inmate Oscar Smith minutes before his scheduled death because the drugs lacked proper testing, leading to a new protocol in 2024 and resumed executions in 2025.
