US: A death row case before the US Supreme Court raises important issues of legal principle, writes David Savage in Washington
The major death penalty case before the US Supreme Court this year reads like a "whodunit", as one judge put it. But if there is doubt about who did it, should the defendant be on death row?
The justices will hear the case on January 11th. While they might not solve the murder mystery, there should be an early clue as to whether the Supreme Court, now led by Chief Justice John Roberts, is willing to overturn a death sentence if an inmate's guilt is in doubt.
Paul G House was the stranger in town in rural east Tennessee during the summer of 1985, when a young mother was abducted and murdered there. House also was a paroled rapist.
He had been seen walking on a road near where the woman's body was found in Union County. He lied to police, denying that he had left his girlfriend's trailer home the night of the murder.
Prosecutors told the jury that House had tricked Carolyn Muncey into leaving her house at night with the intent of sexually assaulting her.
A semen stain on her nightgown was linked to him and a blood spot on his jeans matched hers. House was convicted in 1986 and sentenced to death.
New evidence - including DNA testing - subsequently came to light that raised questions about House's guilt. However, a federal appeals court ruled that it wasn't enough to reopen his case, despite the fact that he is on death row.
The justices will decide whether to make it easier to reopen old cases when new evidence - including DNA testing - raises real doubts about the defendant's guilt.
It has been a decade since the Supreme Court ruled on a rare case in which a death row inmate claimed that he was innocent.
Since then, DNA testing has freed scores of convicted criminals by showing that hair, blood or semen found at crime scenes did not come from them.
In House's case, DNA tests showed the semen sample on Muncey's nightgown came from her husband. A state medical examiner also testified that a blood spot on House's jeans was a result of contamination during testing.
Meanwhile, five new witnesses came forward to implicate the victim's husband, Hubert Muncey. Two women testified that shortly after the murder, they heard Muncey drunkenly confess to having killed his wife.
Nonetheless, the 6th Circuit US Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, by an eight-seven vote, upheld House's conviction, even though the majority agreed he had presented a "colourable claim of actual innocence".
The eight judges in the majority said there remained strong circumstantial evidence of House's guilt. He had lied to police, he was seen near the dead woman's body and he had new cuts and bruises he could not explain.
To win a reversal, a convict such as House "must do more than raise questions about the reliability [ of key evidence against him]", the majority said.
The outcome illustrated an old, if unstated, rule of law: while defendants are presumed innocent until proved guilty, convicts are presumed guilty until proved innocent.
Six of the dissenters were convinced that House was innocent and deserved to go free. The seventh said he at least deserved a new trial. All eight judges who voted to affirm the conviction were Republican appointees, while the seven dissenters were Democratic appointees.
Stephen Kissinger, a federal public defender in Knoxville, Tennessee, has worked on House's case since 1997. He is convinced that no jury would convict his client, now in his mid-40s, if they had heard all the evidence. "The jury didn't hear the overwhelming majority of the evidence in this case."
Lawyers for the Innocence Project in New York say House's case illustrates the problem posed by "false facts". Juries are especially impressed with scientific evidence that, for example, links the suspect to the crime. This evidence is crucial in circumstantial murder cases, they say.
"DNA evidence has revealed a finite but troubling class of convictions tainted by what is best described as 'false facts': forensic evidence that likely carried great weight with the original jury, but which is now known, to a scientific certainty, to have been erroneous," said Peter Neufeld, co- founder of the Innocence Project.
He urged the Supreme Court to rule that federal judges should reopen old cases when new scientific evidence showed that a jury relied on "false facts".
But unlike the many instances in which DNA has freed a convicted prisoner, the new evidence in House's case does not prove his innocence. Indeed, state prosecutors say they remain convinced they got the right man.
The Supreme Court generally has refused to reopen state cases based on new evidence.
"Claims of actual innocence based on newly discovered evidence," the late Chief Justice William H Rehnquist wrote in 1993, do not give federal judges grounds for reversing a state conviction.
"This rule is grounded in the principle that federal habeas courts sit to ensure that individuals are not imprisoned in violation of the constitution, not to correct errors of fact."
In recent years, the Supreme Court has overturned several death sentences, but usually because of a procedural violation, such as racial bias in selecting the jury, or a defence lawyer's failure to tell the jury of crucial evidence.
By contrast, House's lawyers urge the court to rule for their client based on what they call a "persuasive showing of actual innocence". - (Los Angeles Times-Washington Post service)