In Death Row Case, Justices Order Retrial Over Evidence


By LINDA GREENHOUSE

WASHINGTON, May 1 — With the first opinion by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., the Supreme Court ordered a new trial on Monday for an inmate on South Carolina's death row because the state courts improperly excluded evidence showing that another man might have committed the crime. The decision was unanimous.

Justice Alito said the rule of evidence applied by the South Carolina courts was irrational and arbitrary and served to deprive the defendant, Bobbie Lee Holmes, of a "meaningful opportunity to present a complete defense."

The rule in question, which is used by a small minority of states, says that when the state has presented strong forensic evidence of the defendant's guilt, like DNA analysis or a fingerprint, the defense can be prevented from offering the jury contradictory evidence that points to the guilt of another person.

Justice Alito noted that the South Carolina courts applied the rule even when the defense evidence, "if viewed independently, would have great probative value," as it might have had in the case at hand.

Justice Alito, the newest member of the court and a former federal prosecutor, said that "the true strength of the prosecution's proof cannot be assessed without considering challenges to the reliability of the prosecution's evidence."

He added, "The point is that by evaluating the strength of only one party's evidence, no logical conclusion can be reached regarding the strength of contrary evidence offered by the other side to rebut or cast doubt."

The South Carolina rule was arbitrary and irrational in failing to heed this point, he said.

Although the unanimous 11-page opinion made the conclusion seem rather obvious, that was not necessarily how the case appeared as it reached the court. A coalition of 18 states, led by Attorney General Phill Kline of Kansas, filed a brief on South Carolina's behalf to argue that the issue was one of federalism, urging the court to grant the states "substantial latitude and respect" for their various approaches to their criminal justice systems.

Steffen N. Johnson, the lawyer for the state coalition, told the justices when the case was argued on Feb. 22 that nine states had similar rules.

On the defendant's side, the case, Holmes v. South Carolina, No. 04-1327, drew interest from the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and from a group of 40 professors of evidence law, who told the court in their brief that the South Carolina rule was "a judicial usurpation of the jury's constitutional authority to decide guilt or innocence in criminal prosecutions." The professors' brief said "the fundamental issue in this case is the right to trial by jury."

The court has in recent years been paying renewed attention to the Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury, overturning, for example, sentencing systems that allow judges to make the central factual findings that in the court's view should be left to juries.

In his opinion on Monday, however, Justice Alito did not analyze the case as presenting a question under the Sixth Amendment or any other specific constitutional provision. His emphasis on what he called the irrationality and illogic of the South Carolina rule brought the opinion closer to a generalized due process analysis.

No matter what route the court took, its opinion was greeted with approval by defense lawyers. Barry C. Scheck, co-director of the Innocence Project at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, which filed a brief for Mr. Holmes, said the decision was "a strong signal that the Supreme Court is taking the right of defendants to prove their innocence very seriously and is taking a critical look at forensic evidence."

Mr. Scheck said that while DNA evidence had led to many exonerations of criminal defendants, it was "still subject to erroneous interpretation or application, and the defense has a right to challenge that in court."

In this case, Mr. Holmes was convicted of murdering an 86-year-old woman, Mary Stewart, who was robbed, beaten and raped by someone who entered her home. Mr. Holmes was connected to the scene through a palm print, fiber analysis and DNA evidence. He argued that the forensic evidence was unreliable because it had been contaminated and that the police were trying to frame him.

At a pretrial hearing, his lawyers presented witnesses to support his argument that another man was Ms. Stewart's attacker. But the trial court refused, under the South Carolina rule, to allow this evidence to be introduced at trial.

Justice Alito said that while states were free to exclude defense evidence that "has only a very weak logical connection to the central issues," the type of evidence at issue in this case did not come under that description.

"Just because the prosecution's evidence, if credited, would provide strong support for a guilty verdict," he said, "it does not follow that evidence of third-party guilt has only a weak logical connection to the central issues in the case."

In other action on Monday, the court granted review in a death penalty case from California. The case, Ornaski v. Belmontes, No. 05-493, filed by Bill Lockyer, the state attorney general, is an appeal from a ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that found inadequate a jury instruction on how to consider mitigating evidence about a defendant's background and character.

 

1 May 2006

Court Overturns Rule on Evidence Blaming Others

By REUTERS

Filed at 2:35 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a victory for a death row inmate, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday struck down a state rule that restricted the ability of murder defendants to present evidence that someone else committed the crime.

In a unanimous opinion, the high court sided with Bobby Lee Holmes, who was sentenced to death for the 1989 rape, robbery and beating death of 86-year-old Mary Stewart. The ruling overturned his conviction and cleared the way a new trial.

Holmes, who wanted to present evidence pointing to another man as the assailant, argued that the South Carolina rule violated his constitutional right to a fair trial and to present a complete defense.

The Supreme Court agreed that a criminal defendant's constitutional rights are violated by the rule under which a defendant may not introduce evidence that someone else did the crime if prosecutors present evidence strongly supporting a guilty verdict.

Justice Samuel Alito, writing his first opinion since he joined the court at the end of January, described the rule as arbitrary and said it violated a defendant's right to present a complete defense.

In South Carolina, a defendant's evidence that blames someone else can be introduced to the jury only if the judge finds that it creates a ``reasonable inference'' of innocence.

The judge must compare that defense evidence with the prosecution's evidence. If the prosecution's evidence, especially forensic evidence, is found to be ``strong,'' the defense cannot present the evidence that another person was the killer.