Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast
Results 1 to 10 of 13

Thread: Tony Von Carruthers - Tennessee Death Row

  1. #1
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217

    Tony Von Carruthers - Tennessee Death Row




    Summary of Offense:

    Tony Carruthers and James Montgomery were convicted of kidnapping drug dealer Marcellos Anderson, 21, his mother, Delois, 43, and one of Anderson's associates, Frederick Tucker, 17, on February 24, 1994. The two male victims were shot, and then they and Anderson's mother were all buried alive in a grave that had been dug for a funeral in Memphis' Rose Hill Cemetery, according to testimony during Carruthers and Montgomery's trial in 1996.

    Carruthers and Montgomery were sentenced to death on April 26, 1996.

    For more on Montgomery, see: http://www.cncpunishment.com/forums/...ssee-Death-Row

  2. #2
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    13,014
    On June 11, 2008, Carruthers filed a habeas petition in Federal District Court.

    http://dockets.justia.com/docket/ten...cv02425/50726/

  3. #3
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    13,014
    Related

    Montgomery has apparently been re-sentenced. He is due to be released by May 18, 2017.

    https://apps.tn.gov/foil/results.jsp

  4. #4
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    13,014
    On April 21, 2014, Carruthers filed an appeal before the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit over the apparent denial of his habeas petition in Federal District Court.

    http://dockets.justia.com/docket/cir...ts/ca6/14-5457

  5. #5
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    13,014
    On June 13, 2017, oral argument will be heard in Carruthers' appeal before the Sixth Circuit. The panel will be made up of Judges Cole (Clinton), Rogers (G.W. Bush) and Stranch (Obama).

    http://www.ca6.uscourts.gov/sites/ca...122017_arg.pdf

  6. #6
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    13,014
    In today's opinions, the Sixth Circuit DENIED Carruthers' appeal.

    http://www.opn.ca6.uscourts.gov/opin...8a0083p-06.pdf

  7. #7
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    13,014
    On June 26, 2018, the Sixth Circuit DENIED Carruthers' petition for en banc rehearing.

    https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketP...pp%20Final.pdf

  8. #8
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    Death-Row Inmate Forced to Self-Lawyer Asks Justices to Step In

    It’s been said that a man who represents himself in court has a fool for a client. But what if the judge leaves the man no choice?

    The U.S. Supreme Court can answer that question by taking up an unusual appeal from a Tennessee death-row prisoner whose petition will be considered for the first time at the justices’ private conference on Friday.

    The local judge’s decision to make Tony Von Carruthers represent himself at his triple-murder trial raises vital questions about when the Sixth Amendment right to counsel can be snatched away. If the justices don’t intervene, Carruthers could be the first person in a century to be executed after being forced to represent himself at trial.

    “We think this is a critical issue and necessary to correct a serious injustice in a capital case,” his lawyer at the Supreme Court, Eric Citron, told Bloomberg Law.

    After the defendant ran through a series of lawyers and threatened some of them in the lead up to his 1996 trial, the judge presiding over his Shelby County death penalty case said Carruthers had to go it on his own.

    His actions were “part of an overall ploy on his part to delay the case forever until something happens that prevents it from being tried,” Judge Joseph Dailey said.

    Carruthers, a non-lawyer, was convicted and sentenced to death for the drug-related 1994 murders of Marcellos “Cello” Anderson, Delois Anderson, and Frederick Tucker. He and an accomplice buried them alive “inside a freshly dug grave” in Memphis, prosecutors said.

    The accomplice, his co-defendant James Montgomery, was sentenced to death as well. But that was reversed by the state’s top court, which found that Montgomery was so prejudiced in front of the jury by the way Carruthers represented himself that he should have gotten his own trial.

    Citron says that underscores the prejudicial nature of Carruthers’ self-representation to Carruthers, too.

    Montgomery got a new sentencing at which he avoided the death penalty.

    Carruthers says there’s a split among the nation’s courts on whether a judge can take away a defendant’s lawyer as a sanction for misconduct.

    Different judicial approaches have led to “inconsistent and unpredictable results incompatible with the orderly administration of justice,” he says in the filing from Citron and other lawyers at Supreme Court litigation firm Goldstein & Russell, P.C. and a public defender.

    “Courts are all over the map in how they resolve these issues,” said Marc McAllister, a professor at Texas State University whose scholarship is cited in Carruthers’ petition. He said the case pits two Sixth Amendment rights against one another: the right to representation by counsel and the right to self-representation.

    The Supreme Court could take the case to “clarify the precise interplay between the competing Sixth Amendment rights,” McAllister said.

    The high court has set out strict rules for judges to warn defendants about waiving the right to counsel, and that didn’t happen here, Carruthers’ petition points out.

    At the very least, he argues, the judge should have had to issue the formal warnings required for defendants who voluntarily waive the right to counsel, given that it was involuntary in his case.

    The state counters in its opposition brief—it won’t comment on the case beyond the filing—that procedural limitations of habeas corpus review are enough for the justices to reject the appeal.

    Under that rubric, federal courts can deny prisoners relief from state court judgments when those state decisions don’t clearly contravene Supreme Court precedent. So the procedural posture of Carruthers’ case—the fact that he’s appealing the denial of a federal habeas petition rather than directly appealing his state case—makes it a worse vehicle for resolving the Sixth Amendment issue, McAllister said.

    The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit also noted the procedural obstacle when it condoned the habeas denial, though one of the judges who signed onto the unanimous opinion, Jane B. Stranch, criticized the state court’s denial of a lawyer as a sanction. “I cannot agree that a criminal defendant may be denied his Sixth Amendment right to counsel as a form of punishment,” she wrote.

    The case is Carruthers v. Mays, U.S., 18-697, petition pending.

    https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/death-row-inmate-forced-to-self-lawyer-asks-justices-to-step-in
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  9. #9
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    13,014
    In today's orders, the United States Supreme Court declined to review Carruthers' petition for certiorari.

    Lower Ct: United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
    Case Numbers: (14-5457)
    Decision Date: May 3, 2018
    Rehearing Denied: June 26, 2018

    https://www.supremecourt.gov/search....ic/18-697.html

  10. #10
    Senior Member CnCP Addict one_two_bomb's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2015
    Location
    Detroit MI
    Posts
    965
    Looks like another one ready for the electric chair! Too bad live burial isn't an option for this sick animal.

Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •