Last ditch bid to stop execution

US lawyers for a convicted murderer scheduled to be executed on Wednesday have made a last-ditch bid for genetic testing on evidence in his case, saying it is needed to ensure the state doesn’t put an innocent man to death.

Inmate Sedley Alley is fighting his execution by lethal injection on at least two fronts.

Today his lawyers in Nashville, Tennessee, asked the state board of probation and parole to recommend that Governor Phil Bredesen issue a temporary reprieve.

They also requested DNA tests be performed at the inmate’s expense on evidence from the 1985 rape and murder of 19-year-old Marine Lance Cpl Suzanne M Collins at the Millington Naval Air Station outside Memphis.

Earlier in the day, the 6th US circuit court of appeals in Cincinnati refused to order the DNA tests on evidence that included a stick used in the attack, seminal fluid found on the victim’s body and material scraped from under her fingernails.

Alley confessed to most of the crime, but in recent years has recanted his statement to police in what the appeals judges said was “a last-minute claim of actual innocence.”

The defence told the probation board that they have only recently learned Collins’ boyfriend may have been at the scene although he told police he hadn’t seen her that day. The lawyers said they want to test the evidence to determine if any DNA matches the boyfriend.

“I would not come in at the 11th hour if I didn’t have great confidence that this process would work,” attorney Barry Scheck said of the DNA testing.

Scheck is co-founder of Innocence Project, a non-profit legal clinic and criminal justice organisation that uses DNA testing and has exonerated 176 people wrongfully convicted. He also was a member of the defence team for OJ Simpson’s murder trial.

In a letter to Bredesen’s office last week, Scheck said the governor “maybe the only person who can ensure that Mr. Alley is not executed before critical innocence-or-guilt proving DNA tests are conducted.”

Bredesen once before issued a short-term reprieve in the case of inmate Philip Workman because of questions surrounding a former medical examiner’s testimony during a clemency hearing. The reprieve later expired but a new execution date hasn’t been set for Workman.

Alley had been granted the stay because he is challenging the state’s lethal injection method and a decision from the US Supreme Court on a similar case is expected before the court adjourns for the summer.