The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a cap­i­tal case chal­leng­ing the stan­dard of proof need­ed for claims of inno­cence based on new evi­dence. The Justices will con­sid­er an appeal filed by Paul House, a Tennessee death row inmate who says new DNA evi­dence proves he was wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed. In 1993 in Herrera v. Collins, a 5‑member major­i­ty of the Court said a claim of inno­cence based on new evi­dence alone is gen­er­al­ly not enough to mer­it a new hear­ing in fed­er­al court. However, in 1995 in Schlup v. Delo, the Court ruled that a con­vict­ed mur­der­er who had oth­er con­sti­tu­tion­al claims in addi­tion to an inno­cence claim could get a new hear­ing if he could show that his new evi­dence makes it prob­a­ble that ​“no rea­son­able juror would have found him guilty beyond a rea­son­able doubt.” Last year in House’s case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit vot­ed 8 to 7 that House’s evi­dence did not meet this stan­dard. Six of the dis­senters believed his new evi­dence was strong enough to show his inno­cence. The issue before the Supreme Court is what stan­dard should be used by fed­er­al courts to eval­u­ate claims of inno­cence on the basis of new­ly dis­cov­ered evi­dence. The case is House v. Bell, No. 04 – 8990. 

(See New York Times, June 28, 2005). See Supreme Court and Innocence.

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