LUTTRELL, Tenn. -- It has been nearly two decades since the body of Carolyn Muncey was discovered under some brush, just 100 yards from her small cabin in this Appalachian hamlet. The 29-year-old mother of two had been savagely beaten, and her death shook a tiny tobacco-growing community to its roots.
Not long after her slaying, authorities charged Paul Gregory House, a paroled rapist from Utah who lived nearby, with her murder. In February 1986, a local jury convicted him and sentenced him to death.
Long after the trial, DNA tests were performed on Muncey's clothes. They proved that body fluids on the clothes belonged not to House, as authorities believed and told the jury, but to the victim's husband, Hubert Muncey Jr.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in House's case, the first in which a death row inmate has come to the high court with DNA evidence claiming innocence. The justices' intervention takes place at a time when DNA evidence may be changing the way Americans think about criminal justice, including the death penalty; last week Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner (D) ordered DNA testing in the case of a man executed in 1992, to see whether he was wrongly put to death.
Details here from the Washington Post. My post about Virginia case is here.