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U.S. Supreme Court

Top court weighs push to update evidence rules

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Wednesday weighed its desire to bring closure to criminal cases against growing concern over how courts should treat newly discovered evidence of innocence years after a capital conviction.

Originally, the case of convicted murderer Paul Gregory House had generated excitement in legal circles because DNA testing, conducted 20 years after the jury's verdict, had revealed that semen found on the murder victim's nightgown and underwear belonged to her husband, not House.

But Wednesday's hourlong session before the high court dealt little with the DNA testing, which was not available when House was convicted of kidnapping, trying to rape and then killing Carolyn Muncey, a young mother of two, in Union County, Tenn., north of Knoxville, in July 1985.

Instead, the argument highlighted the often messy nature of criminal trials, where experts duel over how to interpret evidence, prosecutors withhold evidence and police fail to pursue all suspects.

For the court, the stakes are high. The justices are being asked to account for advances in science by adjusting legal standards aimed at bringing finality to criminal cases, or risk allowing the execution of an innocent person.

The advent of DNA testing has led to numerous exonerations and raised concerns among civil libertarians, prosecutors and some members of the high court that an innocent person may be executed, or already has been.

WASHINGTON - A divided Supreme Court reinstated a California inmate's death sentence on Wednesday, the first 5-4 vote under newly installed Chief Justice John Roberts.

Justices overturned an appeals court ruling that Ronald Sanders' sentence was unconstitutional. Sanders was put on death row in 1982 for killing a woman in Bakersfield, Calif.

The case presented a technical question for the court involving jurors' consideration of invalid aggravating factors. Two of the four special circumstances used by prosecutors in their case against Sanders were later found invalid.

California argued that Sanders would have been eligible for a death sentence even without those factors. Five members of the high court agreed.

"The erroneous factor could not have "skewed' the sentence, and no constitutional violation occurred," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in an opinion for the majority.

[Last modified January 12, 2006, 01:26:11]