Execution Imminent, DNA Tests Urged

Two rape victims, the mother of a murder victim and five convicted killers later exonerated through DNA testing have asked the Tennessee Supreme Court to stay the execution of a man scheduled to die Wednesday.

Sedley Alley was convicted of the 1985 rape and murder of 19-year-old Marine Lance Cpl. Suzanne M. Collins. His lawyers assert that DNA tests not available at the time of his trial should be performed.

The Tennessee courts have said Alley is not entitled to the testing. Last week, the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals said it was “not inclined to disregard the overwhelming evidence” against Alley and embrace a new theory of the crime in search of a “speculative phantom defendant.”

But Alley’s lawyers, including Kelley Henry of the Federal Public Defender’s office in Nashville and Barry Scheck of the Innocence Project in New York, noted that in 63 of the 180 DNA exonerations over the past 20 years, the real criminal has been identified.

Alley initially confessed to the crimes but later recanted. Long after the trial, defense lawyers discovered that a coroner had set the time of Collins’ death at a time when Alley had an alibi.

In their briefs filed Monday, the five exonerated men -- all of whom had received life sentences -- and the crime victims argued that the evidence in Alley’s case should be reexamined.

“The power of DNA is that it can provide scientific evidence of the ‘truth’ in a case, the truth that provides the finality and closure that victims and families of victims need,” said the document filed on behalf of Karen R. Pomer, a Los Angeles rape victim; Jennifer ThompsonCannino, a Massachusetts rape victim; and Jeanette Popp, the mother of a Texas murder victim.

The identities of the criminals in their cases were determined through DNA testing. Thompson-Cannino initially testified against the man she thought had raped her in 1984, and he received two life sentences. Eleven years later, DNA tests revealed that another man had committed the crime. More than 10 years after Popp’s daughter was murdered, it came to light that one of the two men sentenced to life in the slaying had been pressured into confessing that he and the other man were guilty. DNA testing later revealed that a different man had committed the murder.

The brief said those arguing on Alley’s behalf were not insensitive to “the need for finality in convictions, the threat of seemingly endless appeals, and the creation of undue administrative burdens.” But, the document said, they believe those concerns are outweighed by “interests in producing correct results, in identifying and punishing only the guilty, in exonerating and freeing the innocent, and locating and prosecuting the real perpetrators of crimes.”

Because Alley’s execution is imminent, the briefs also were filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, which will be asked to review the case if the Tennessee Supreme Court rejects it.