Latest / Crime Night / The botched execution of Tony Carruthers

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The botched execution of Tony Carruthers · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Look, usually when we dive into these death penalty cases,
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: the state paints this picture of like total surgical precision, right? Yeah.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: You read the files and they want you to imagine
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: a sterile, flawless process.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the whole system actually relies on
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: that perception. It is engineered to look like a routine
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: medical procedure. Right.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: They want to distance us from the reality of what's
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: actually happening. But I've been going through the firsthand accounts
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: from the execution chamber at Riverbend Maximum Security Prison. This
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: was on May 21st, 2026.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: And the illusion just completely shatters there, doesn't it?
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Oh, it doesn't just shatter. It turns into a horror film. Okay.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, I want to put you listening to this
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: right now directly into that room because as an investigator
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: reading this scene, it just chills you.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: It really does. It airs this early in the morning
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: and you've got Marie Deliberato, this ACLU attorney, standing right
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: there in the chamber.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she's locking eyes with her client, Tony Carruthers, as
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: the whole lethal injection protocol starts. And on the other
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: side of this thick curtain... You have the media witnesses
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: just waiting.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Right, because standard protocol is that the curtain only goes
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: up once they've successfully established the IV lines.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Exactly. But minutes go by, and then tens of minutes.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: And that curtain, it never moves.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: Which is just a massive red flag. Anyone familiar with
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: the procedure knows that a closed curtain means there's a
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: catastrophic breakdown happening behind it.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: And breakdown is putting it mildly. The witnesses start hearing
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: these loud groans echoing through the glass.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: Like, well over an hour, officials are frantically trying to
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: get a central IV line in.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're puncturing his chest. They're even trying to go
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: through his throat.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: It's unbearable to even think about. Marie's official account describes
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: just multiple oozing puncture wounds, blood pooling everywhere, and they
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: just cannot find a viable vein.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: I mean, stripping away all the legal jargon, you've basically
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: got a state government struggling for over an hour to
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: inflict a fatal wound. And completely failing.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the physical trauma of that hour is just, it's unimaginable.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: So because they physically can't do it, they have to
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: call it off, which is incredibly rare.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: It is. They effectively give him a bureaucratic rain check. Right.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: The governor halts it and gives Tony Carruthers exactly one
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: year until May 2027 to prove his innocence. And the
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: timing here is just wild because days before this botched execution,
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: Kim Kardashian and all these other people were begging the
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: governor to test DNA evidence in his case.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: It was like this macabre hourglass just suddenly flipped over.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: Exactly. I mean, is this unprecedented for the universe to just,
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: you know, hit the pause button right as the most
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: glaring questions about the evidence are finally coming to light?
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: Pausing at mid-procedure is exceptionally rare. But the physical failure
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: on that gurney is really only half the story here.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Right, because that 365-day stay of execution is so huge
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: because the entire 32-year-old conviction, keeping him on death row,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: is just crumbling.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: It's totally disintegrating. To understand why this one year might
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: actually rewrite legal history, we have to jump all the
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: way back to how this original investigation started.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to Memphis, Tennessee. It's February 24th, 1994,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: around 8 p.m. A young woman calls her aunt's house.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Her aunt is Delois Anderson.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: Right. And the phone connects, but nobody says anything.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the niece just hears this eerie, heavy silence on
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: the line. And then it goes dead. So an hour later,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: she drives over to the house. Delois is completely gone,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: but her purse, her car keys, her car, they're all
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: still there.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: And as an investigator, when you look at the crime
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: scene photos from that night, there's one detail that changes everything.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: There is half-eaten food sitting right in Delois' bedroom.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: Right. And people, you know, they don't just abandon a
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: meal halfway through, leave their keys, and casually walk out
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: the door.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: No, never. That scene just screams that there was a violent,
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: abrupt interruption.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: And the panic sets in fast because Deloitte isn't the
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: only one missing. Her 21-year-old son, Marcellos, and his 17-year-old friend,
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: Fred Tucker, have also just vanished.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: They were last seen driving around in a borrowed Jeep.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And the very next morning at 2.40 a.m., police
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: find that Jeep. But it's across state lines in Mississippi.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: And it is completely torched, just burned right down to
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: the frame.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: And fire is the ultimate forensic destroyer. Finding a charred
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: vehicle like that, it elevates the threat level immediately.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely. You know you're not looking for runaways anymore.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: You're dealing with a coordinated crime. And whoever did it
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: had the presence of mind to destroy the physical evidence.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they were systematically covering their tracks.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: So for a week, the trail goes totally cold. But
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: then on March 3rd, Memphis police get a call from
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: this guy. Jonathan Montgomery. And he says he needs to
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: take them to Rose Hill Cemetery.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: Which is just a bizarre turn. He walks the investigators
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: right up to a freshly dug, legitimate grave of a
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: woman who had just been buried.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: And he tells the cops to dig into the casket.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, just think about the sheer audacity of that.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: It's chilling. The physical labor required to excavate a fresh,
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: authorized grave, hide bodies underneath it, and then put the
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: casket back without anyone noticing. That is cold-blooded.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: It is. So the police pull back the dirt, they
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: host up the casket, and underneath it is just a
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: total nightmare. They find three bodies, Deloria, Marcellos, and Fred.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: And they were bound, right, their hands tied behind their backs.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, hands bound. The two young men had fatal gunshot wounds,
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: and Deloria had a sock tied tightly around her neck.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: So immediately investigators are looking for a motive. Why this
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: level of extreme calculated violence?
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: Well, Jonathan Montgomery tells them it was about greed. Marcellos
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: apparently flashed this huge diamond ring and kept a lot
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: of cash up in his mom's attic.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: And Jonathan points the finger at his own brother, James Montgomery,
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: and this other guy, Tony Carruthers, who had just gotten
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: out of prison.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: But, and this is where I have a massive problem
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: as an investigator, Jonathan's playing the helpful tipster, right? But
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: police find out that earlier that same day, he bragged
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: to a friend.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: Ah, yes. The $ 200, 000 brag. Exactly.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: Exactly. He told his friend, we got these guys out
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: of the cemetery, we got $ 200, 000, and they had to
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: kill them.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: That changes the entire calculus. I mean, using the word
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: we legally implicates him as a co-conspirator. Right.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: It's like you open up a morbid Russian nesting doll
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: and there's something worse inside. If the guy leading you
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: to the bodies is bragging about a $ 200, 000 payday... How
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: do the police just view him as a witness?
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: It's a classic investigative compromise. Detectives make deals with the
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: devil they know to get to the rest of the network.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: They were using him as a wedge.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but because of that recorded brag, they don't give
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: him immunity. They charge Jonathan with murder right alongside his
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: brother James and Tony Carruthers.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: But the state never actually gets to put Jonathan on
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: the stand.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: No, they don't. Because right before the trial, the whole
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: narrative just evaporates. Jonathan hangs himself in his jail cell.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: And without him, the state's entire case collapses.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: Totally spectacular collapse. They have these three bodies, but the
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: bridge connecting the cemetery to Tony and James is just gone.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: The charges actually get dismissed.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: Which is a political nightmare for prosecutors. A dismissed capital
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: case with three highly publicized murders. They had nothing.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: Nothing. Until, out of thin air, a guy named Alfredo
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: Shaw walks into the police station. And he claims... that
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: Tony Carruthers confessed this entire elaborate plot to him.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: Talk about a miracle witness for the state.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: Too much of a miracle. Shaw gives this incredibly detailed story.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: He says they kidnapped the boys, shot them in Mississippi,
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: burned the Jeep, and brought them back to the cemetery.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: But it says the detail about Deloitte that really seals it,
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: isn't it?
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Shaw claims that when they threw the boys into
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: the grave, Deloitte started screaming. So he says they just
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: pushed her into the dirt alive.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: You really have to view Shaw's sudden appearance through the
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: lens of prosecutorial desperation. He gave them a perfect narrative anchor.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: And a mechanism for the death penalty. I mean, burying
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: a mother alive on top of her murdered son. A
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: jury is going to view that as purely evil.
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. It guarantees a death sentence if they believe it.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: But Shaw is so erratic, he actually goes to the
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: local media at one point and admits he made the
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: whole thing up.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: Which should have tanked his credibility immediately.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: You would think. But the state threatens him with perjury
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: if he recants. So they do something incredibly risky. They
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: decide not to put him on the stand live.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: Right. They just rid his highly damning grand jury testimony
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: into the record instead. Yeah.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: And jailhouse informants are historically the most radioactive part of
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: the justice system. Their motives are usually about getting a
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: payout or a reduced sentence.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: The prosecutors knew that putting him in front of a
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: jury for cross-examination would expose his lies instantly. By just
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: using a transcript, they shield him from any real scrutiny.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, they shielded him from their own scrutiny, sure.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: But they didn't anticipate Tony Carruthers acting pro se.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: Ah, this is where the case just goes entirely off
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: the rails.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, I have to pause here because it defies
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: all logic. Tony is allowed to represent himself in a
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: capital murder trial. But his medical records show severe schizophrenia, psychosis,
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: bipolar disorder, and documented brain damage.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: He's a staggering failure of judicial discretion. Right.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: He had aggressively fired six different defense attorneys. How does
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: a judge look at that and say, sure, defend yourself
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: against a death penalty case? It's like trying to do
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: open heart surgery on yourself while blindfolded.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: The tragic flaw in the system is that the bar
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: for competency to stand trial is shockingly low. You basically
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: just need to know who the judge and jury are.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: It doesn't mean you can actually litigate a complex capital case.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: And that failure leads to a fatal trial error. Tony,
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: acting as his own lawyer, did the one thing a
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: real defense attorney would never, ever do. He calls Alfredo
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Shaw to the stand himself.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: He essentially hands the prosecution their most dangerous weapon on
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: a silner platter.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Shaw gets on the stand, feels the pressure of
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: perjury from the state, and completely reverts to his horror story.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: He points right at Tony and recounts the whole buried
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: alive narrative in front of the jury.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: And Tony didn't have the legal skills to dismantle that
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: credibility on cross-examination.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: No, it was a disaster. And the prosecution immediately follows
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: Shaw with a scientific hammer. They bring in the medical examiner.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: And the Emmy testifies that he found dirt deep in
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: DeLoa's airway and signs of active bleeding in the boys.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he tells the jury this physically proves they were
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: breathing when the dirt was thrown over them. That testimony
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: sealed the coffin. In April 1996, both Tony and James
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: are sentenced to death.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: Though it's worth noting James eventually gets a new trial
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: because Tony's self-representation tainted his case so badly.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, James takes a plea deal for 27 years and
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: gets out in 2015. But Tony just sits on death
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: row for decades.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: Trapped in an appellate system that really hates pro se
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: defendants trying to untangle their own messes. Right.
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: And it isn't until Maria Deliberato and the ACLU step in,
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: leading up to that 2026 execution date, that anyone really
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: scrutinizes the foundation of this conviction.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: And when they start digging, they find massive red flags
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: that were just kept hidden or ignored.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: Oh, the whole case collapses like a Jenga tower. Yeah.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: Let's look at the forensics. Police found six unidentified fingerprints
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: on the doorknobs and the phone receiver at Deloitte's house.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: Which is huge, considering that eerie, silent phone call.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And those prints do not match Tony, James, or Jonathan.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: There is also an unknown male DNA profile on a
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: bloody blanket found in the grave.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: So you have objective physical evidence placing an unknown person
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: at the abduction site and the burial site.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: And the craziest part... The state only ever tested one
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: of the bindings used on the victims, just one. And
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: the DNA wasn't a match to the defendant's.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: So naturally, the ACLU files an emergency petition to test
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: the rest of the bindings and the fingernail scrapings before
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: the execution.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: And the Tennessee Supreme Court explicitly denies the request. I mean,
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: why would a legal system resist testing existing DNA when
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: the whole structure of their case is crumbled?
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: You're running into the appellate concept of finality. The system
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: believes there has to be an end to litigation or
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: else it drains state resources.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: But this is a man's life. I know.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: But courts often argue that unless new DNA would completely
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: obliterate any possibility of a defendant's involvement, they won't halt
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: the machinery of the state. They prioritize the procedural integrity
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: of that 1996 verdict over actual factual accuracy.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: Going back to that Jenga tower analogy. If you pull
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: out the buried alive block and the reliable witness block,
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: the tower falls and the state is just pretending it's
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: still standing.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about that buried alive block because in 2007,
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: the original medical examiner actually filed a sworn affidavit retracting
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: his testimony.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: Wait, how does an M.E. just change their mind on
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: something that put a man on death row?
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: He stated that post-mortem pressure could have caused the physical
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: signs he originally saw.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: Meaning Alfredo Shaw's whole cinematic horror story about Deloitte screaming
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: might be complete biological fiction.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Think about the biomechanics of a collapsing grave. When
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: you dump tons of earth on a body, the environmental
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: pressure is immense. It compresses the chest cavity, forcing air
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: and fluids up the windpipe.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: So it mimics active breathing and bleeding.
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: Yes. The ME realized he had conflated that environmental compression
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: with actual signs of life.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: Wow. So the most emotionally manipulative piece of evidence given
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: to the jury was scientifically hollow. But then the ACLU
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: uncovers an even bigger block in 2024.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: The revelation about Alfredo Shaw.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It turns out Shaw wasn't just some guy Tony
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: confessed to. He was actually a paid confidential informant for
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: the Memphis PD from 1980 all the way to 2003.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: And the state denied this for years.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: They hid it. I mean, if you're on a jury,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: you're evaluating a man's life based on a witness's credibility.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: The prosecution is legally obligated. to turn over any evidence
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: that a witness has a financial motive to lie.
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: That's a textbook Brady violation. They manufactured a credible witness
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: out of a paid operative and left the jury completely
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: in the dark.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: And we know what the jury would have done, because
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: two of the original jurors actually came forward in writing.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: They said if they had known the buried alive testimony
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: was flawed and that Shaw was being paid, they never
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: would have voted for the death penalty.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: So the jury itself admits the verdict is compromised. Right.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: So why does finality still win out over simply testing
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: the unknown DNA?
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: Because admitting the system failed requires the state to acknowledge
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: they prioritize securing a death sentence over seeking the truth.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: Especially when they literally have the name of another suspect.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, before James Montgomery was released, he told federal
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: investigators that Tony was never at the cemetery. Right.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: James confessed to the murders but named his accomplice as
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: a man named Ronnie Eyeball Irving.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: And Ronnie was murdered in 2002, so it seems like
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: a dead end. But police have his DNA and fingerprints
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: on file.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: And the ACLU has been begging the state to just
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: compare Eyeball's DNA to the unknown profiles from the crime scene.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: And the state just flatly refuses. They'd rather leave the
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: evidence in a locker than risk proving their 30-year-old conviction wrong.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: It is a profound omission of investigative duty.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: And while all this legal bureaucracy happens, the human cost
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: is just devastating.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: Hmm.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: Fred Tucker's father spoke to the media right before the
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: 2026 execution date. He said his son is forever 17.
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: He was actually planning to attend the execution for closure, right?
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he said he forgave Tony but felt it was
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: time for him to meet his maker. And meanwhile, Tony
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: is sitting in a cell, his mental state rapidly declining,
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: sending out these scrambled messages.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: But he remains fiercely insistent on two things. That he
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: is innocent and that Shaw was paid to frame him,
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: which turned out to be true.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: Right, and it just forces us to ask, We have
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: grieving families seeking closure while an intellectually disabled man sits
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: on death row for a crime that a known suspect
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: might have committed. Is the system prioritizing the comfort of
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: closing a case over the objective truth?
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: If courts prioritize the finality of a verdict over the
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: accuracy of the evidence, then justice isn't being served. It's
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: simply being concluded.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: And it was agonizingly close to being concluded on May 21st, 2026.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: Tony survived that horrific hour-long botched execution. It bought him
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: exactly 365 days.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: A rapidly depleting window to force the state to finally
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: test that DNA.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: Exactly. This isn't just historical true crime. It's an active,
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: ticking clock legal battle. It challenges all of us to
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: consider what justice means when the machinery of death moves
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: faster than the machinery of truth.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: We really have to scrutinize what we allow the legal
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: system to do in our names.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: I want to leave you in the final chilling thought
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: to ponder as we wrap up this deep dive. Put
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: yourself back in that execution chamber for one last second.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: If the Tennessee Department of Correction had been just slightly
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: more proficient at finding a vein on that gurney, Tony
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: Carruthers would be dead. And the secrets of the paid informant,
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: the retracted medical testimony, and the untested DNA of an
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: ultimate suspect would have been permanently buried with him forever.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: It really makes you wonder how many flawlessly executed death
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: sentences have already successfully buried similar truths.