High Court Win for Defendants

With Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. writing his first opinion, the Supreme Court on Monday overturned the murder conviction of a South Carolina man and said his lawyers had been wrongly barred from arguing that another man had committed the crime.

“The Constitution guarantees criminal defendants a meaningful opportunity to present a complete defense,” Alito said for a unanimous court.

The decision strikes down an unusual rule in South Carolina that allowed judges to short-circuit a defendant’s case before the trial got underway.

Though there are few real-life Perry Masons, defense lawyers often seek to prove their client’s innocence by showing another person may be guilty of the crime.

However, South Carolina’s judges have said that if the prosecution has strong evidence of a defendant’s guilt, the defense can be barred from presenting evidence that points squarely to another suspect.

Alito said this rule “is no more logical than its converse would be” -- a rule that would throw out the prosecution’s evidence whenever the defendant had a strong alibi.

“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,” he wrote.

The case began on New Year’s Eve in 1989 when an 86-year-old South Carolina woman was beaten, robbed and assaulted in her home. She later died of her injuries.

Bobby Lee Holmes had been involved in a fight earlier in the evening and fled from police.

He was arrested and charged with the woman’s murder. Blood and fingerprint evidence linked Holmes to the crime.

His lawyers said Holmes was innocent and pointed to witnesses who had seen another man, Jimmy White, near the woman’s house on the night of the murder.

Four witnesses said at a preliminary hearing that they had heard White admit to the crime or say Holmes was innocent.

Nonetheless, the judge excluded this evidence from Holmes’ trial because prosecutors had “strong forensic evidence” of his guilt. He was convicted and sentenced to death.

The South Carolina courts upheld the verdict and the death sentence.

Last year, Los Angeles lawyers William A. Norris, formerly a judge on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and Edward Lazarus, a former Supreme Court clerk, filed an appeal in the Supreme Court on behalf of Holmes.

The justices voted to hear the case, and it was argued Feb. 22, Alito’s second day on the bench. As an appeals court judge, he had a generally conservative record on criminal cases.

Alito’s ruling said judges were entitled to exclude evidence pointing to third parties if it was misleading or irrelevant. However, it is arbitrary and unconstitutional to exclude evidence that might well cast doubt on the defendant’s guilt, he said.

Cornell law professor John H. Blume, who argued Holmes’ case, said the ruling would give him a new trial. “This is a very good outcome, and hopefully, it will lead to his acquittal,” Blume said.