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Third trial ordered for death row prisoner
The state Supreme Court decides Gerald Murray should be tried again because of DNA evidence that fell short.
©Associated Press
October 4, 2002
TALLAHASSEE -- A death row inmate twice convicted in the murder of a Jacksonville woman must have a third trial because the testing of DNA evidence in his case didn't meet scientific standards, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
It's the second time Gerald Murray has won a new trial because of DNA.
Murray, 33, is on death row for the September 1990 murder of Alice Vest, who was raped, beaten, stabbed and strangled.
His conviction rested, in part, on a hair found at the crime scene. The state offered evidence that Murray's DNA matched the hair, using an analysis employed when the sample tested is small.
But in April 1997, the high court overturned his conviction and sentence, ruling that the trial judge didn't meet standards for admitting DNA evidence. The unanimous decision also said the state failed to show why the DNA analysis should be allowed and that its expert wasn't qualified.
Murray was retried in February 1999, convicted and condemned again.
In Thursday's 5-2 decision, the court agreed with Murray that the DNA evidence should not have been admitted because the way it was tested didn't meet scientific standards.
Also Thursday, the high court rejected appeals from three death row inmates:
Roger Lee Cherry, 51, who was condemned for the fatal beating of Ester Wayne in her DeLand home during a 1986 burglary. Micah Nelson, 26, who raped 78-year-old Virginia Brace in her Polk County home in 1997, put her in her car trunk and left her body in an orange grove.
Norman Grim Jr., 42, who raped, stabbed and fatally beat Cynthia Campbell in 1998.
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