High Court Rules Inmate Deserves New Hearing on Withheld Evidence

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled a convicted murderer deserves a new hearing to assess whether evidence withheld before trial would have changed jurors’ decision to impose the death penalty.

The court ruled for Tennessee death-row inmate Gary Cone in a 7-2 opinion, SCOTUSblog reports. The majority decision by Justice John Paul Stevens said lower courts had failed to adequately consider whether police reports that had been withheld would have changed the opinion of at least one death-penalty juror.

Cone, a Vietnam veteran, had claimed he was suffering from an amphetamine psychosis when he killed an elderly Memphis couple following a two-day crime spree. A prosecutor had called the assertion “baloney” and the Tennessee Supreme Court said there was no evidence to support the claim when it affirmed the conviction. But the prosecution had not disclosed previous police reports that called Cone a heavy drug user and said he looked frenzied after the crime.

“In the 27 years since Gary Cone was convicted of murder and sentenced to death, no Tennessee court has reached the merits of his claim that state prosecutors withheld evidence that would have bolstered his defense and rebutted the state’s attempts to cast doubt on his alleged drug addiction,” Stevens wrote. “Today we hold that the Tennessee courts’ procedural rejection of Cone’s Brady claim does not bar federal habeas review of the merits of that claim.”

Story corrected on May 1 to reflect that the opinion was decided by a vote of 7-2.