Lifesaving evidence

EVEN MANY SUPPORTERS OF capital punishment probably assume that a death row inmate is guaranteed another day in court if new evidence, especially DNA evidence, emerges that undermines the original case against him. Until Monday, they would have been wrong.

That was when the Supreme Court, by a 5-3 vote, ordered a federal district judge to provide a new habeas corpus hearing for Paul G. House, a Tennessee man who was sentenced to death in the 1985 kidnapping and murder of a young mother. Unlike some of the court’s fact-specific death penalty decisions, this one could have wide application as more convicted defendants seek exoneration through DNA evidence. That’s because the decision requires a judge considering a convicted defendant’s habeas corpus petition to view the jury deliberations at his trial as part of a “holistic” process -- one in which one sort of evidence affects how a jury views other evidence.

In asking jurors to sentence House to death, prosecutors suggested that he had sexually assaulted Carolyn Muncey and then killed her because she resisted or because he wanted to cover up his deed. But later, DNA testing indicated that semen found on Muncey’s nightgown did not come from House.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s majority opinion calls the belated DNA evidence a “new disclosure of central importance” in the way jurors would look at the case. In a 1995 case, the high court ruled that prisoners who otherwise had exhausted their appeals could pursue a writ of habeas corpus if, in light of new evidence, it was more probable than not that “no juror, acting reasonably, would have voted to find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.” House met that test, Kennedy concluded.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., joined in dissent by justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, disagreed. “The question,” Roberts wrote, “is not whether House was prejudiced at his trial because the jurors were not aware of the new evidence but whether all the evidence, considered together, proves that House was actually innocent, so that no reasonable juror would vote to convict him.”

At first glance, the outcome of this case -- while obviously good news for House -- might seem to offer little encouragement to other death row inmates seeking to challenge their convictions. After all, both Kennedy and Roberts purported to be applying the same legal standard to a specific set of facts. But Kennedy’s “holistic” approach sends a clear signal to lower-court judges: Henceforth, they must take a generous view of the way new evidence, scientific and otherwise, might undermine convictions.

From now on, a defendant need not offer evidence disputing each piece of evidence offered against him. It will be enough to cast doubt on information that affected how jurors weighed the credibility of nonscientific evidence. For example, if a juror believes that flawed DNA evidence establishes a defendant’s presence at a murder scene, she is more likely to credit an eyewitness identification.

Welcome as this decision is, the best way to prevent unjust impositions of the death penalty is to do away with capital punishment altogether, as other civilized societies have done. Unfortunately, as the Supreme Court grows ever more uneasy with the death penalty, elected officials agitate ever more aggressively for it.