A deeply divid­ed U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled 8 – 7 that the exe­cu­tion of Tennessee death row inmate Paul Gregory House may move for­ward despite the fact that near­ly half of the judges believe he is not guilty and should be freed imme­di­ate­ly. ​“We are faced with a real-life mur­der mys­tery, an authen­tic ​‘who-done-it’ where the wrong man may be exe­cut­ed,” wrote dis­sent­ing judge Ronald Lee Gilman. A N.Y. Times arti­cle not­ed that although courts are often close­ly divid­ed on legal issues, rarely are they split on the basic ques­tion of guilt or inno­cence in a death penal­ty case.

Recent retest­ing of DNA evi­dence in the case found that semen orig­i­nal­ly thought to have come from House, who was con­vict­ed of rap­ing and mur­der­ing Carolyn Muncey in 1985, actu­al­ly came from Muncey’s hus­band, Hubert. At a recent fed­er­al District Court hear­ing to deter­mine whether to allow House’s case to be reopened based on the new DNA evi­dence, wit­ness­es tes­ti­fied that Hubert Muncey was an alco­holic who fre­quent­ly beat his wife and who lat­er con­fessed to killing her while drunk. While the major­i­ty of the Court of Appeals was will­ing to let the exe­cu­tion go for­wared, six dis­sent­ing judges strong­ly dis­agreed, not­ing, ​“Without any evi­dence of rape, the state has lost its motive, its the­o­ry of the case and the aggra­vat­ing cir­cum­stance on which the state and the jury relied for his death ver­dict. There is no rea­son­able basis for dis­be­liev­ing the six wit­ness­es who now incrim­i­nate Mr. Muncey as the per­pe­tra­tor of the crime. House has shown that it is high­ly prob­a­ble that he is com­plete­ly inno­cent of any wrong­do­ing what­so­ev­er. House should be imme­di­ate­ly released.” The 8 – 7 rul­ing means that unless the U.S. Supreme Court inter­venes or Mr. House dies first from the mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis he has, he will be exe­cut­ed. (New York Times, October 7, 2004) See Innocence.

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