Murderpedia, Tennessee Department of Corrections
From left to right from top left: Oscar Franklin Smith, Harold Wayne Nichols, Pervis Tyrone Payne, Gary Wayne Sutton, Donald Middlebrooks, Byron Black, Farris Genner Morris, Pervis Tyrone Payne, Henry Eugene Hodges
Two of the nine men who could soon be executed by the state were convicted in Shelby County.
Late Tuesday, Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery quietly requested execution dates for the nine men from the Tennessee Supreme Court.
Executions began again in Tennessee last year. The last before 2018 was in 2009. The state has executed five men since August 9th, 2018. The latest, Stephen West, was executed by lethal injection on August 15th, 2019.
The Tennessee Supreme Court will now decide whether or not to set execution dates for the nine men Slatery proposed for execution this week. All of them are now on death row at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.
Of them, two were convicted of murder in Shelby County, one occurring in Memphis and the other in Millington. Another man was convicted of murder in nearby Madison County. All of these comprise the total of West Tennessee prisoners now considered for execution.
Caruthers
Tony Von Caruthers was convicted in Memphis for a 1994 triple homicide of Marcellos Anderson, Delois Anderson, and Frederick Tucker. WREG reported that the murders began as a drug deal with Marcellos Anderson. Delois Anderson was his mother and Tucker was a teenage friend. The station said that the mother and friend were beaten, tortured, and buried under a grave dug for someone else.
Caruthers and another man were tried and convicted in the same trial. The other man was set free in 2016 after winning an appeal in the case. In February, the Tennessee Supreme Court denied a final appeal for Caruthers in the case.
Payne
Pervis Tyrone Payne was convicted in 1988 of the 1987 stabbing murder of Charisse Christopher and her two-year-old daughter, Lacie Jo, in Millington.
Payne’s execution was set for 2007 but was put on hold when Gov. Phil Bredesen put a moratorium on executions to review Tennessee’ lethal injection protocols.
In 2016, Payne was denied a hearing to determine whether or not he was eligible for execution because he is intellectually disabled.
Morris
Hodges
Farris Genner Morris was convicted of shooting and stabbing a man and his niece to death in Madison County in 1994.
Henry Eugene Hodges was convicted of the 1990 robbery and murder of a man in Smyrna. Hodges, 24 at the time, and his girlfriend, 15 at the time, robbed and ransacked a man’s house, stole his bank PIN, and
Middlebrooks
Donald Middlebrooks murdered a 14-year-old with a knife in 1987. He was convicted and sentenced to death in 1989.
Nichols
Serial rapist Harold Wayne Nichols (aka “Red Headed Stranger”) was convicted of the
Smith
1988 murder of a woman in Chattanooga by hitting her on the head with a board.
Oscar Franklin Smith stabbed to death his estranged wife and 
Sutton
her two teenaged sons in Davidson county in 1988.
Gary Wayne Sutton murdered a man and his sister
Black
in Blount County in 1992.
In Davidson County, Byron Lewis Black murdered his girlfriend, Angela Clay, and her two daughters, Latoya, 9, and Lakeisha Clay, 6, in 1988.
