Another man freed on DNA evidence

[Rudey]

Oh look at that...dirty cops and dirty prosecutors robbed this man of a good portion of his life. What do you know?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/17/nyregion/17dna.html

Somehow a guy admits to a crime citing details that there is no way he knew (ie a detective was dirty and lied or tricked him), the prosecutors did not want to allow him a DNA test, when the DNA test was done and showed it wasn't him they still didn't want to release him.

There are cases like this all over the country, including one in Nashville:

There, another man who had confessed to murder, Sedley Alley, was granted a two week stay of execution by Gov. Phil Bredesen of Tennessee so he could return to court to make new arguments for DNA testing that prosecutors have opposed and courts have not permitted.

Mr. Alley was scheduled to be executed at 1 a.m. today, but the state Board of Probation and Parole voted 4 to 3 to recommend that Governor Bredesen delay the execution to permit new tests. In presenting their plea to the board, Mr. Alley's lawyers said that the case of Mr. Warney in New York offered instructive parallels.

"The Warney case is so eerily similar to ours that it's scary," said Kelley J. Henry, an assistant federal defender in Nashville who is one of Mr. Alley's lawyers.

In both cases, the men were said by prosecutors to have made convincing admissions of guilt, offering details that only the killers would have known. Defense lawyers said that the confessions also contained striking inconsistencies with important facts. In neither case were DNA tests conducted, and the prosecutions rested almost entirely on the disputed confessions.

Prosecutors say that Mr. Alley admitted to killing and raping a 19-year-old marine, Suzanne Collins, in 1985. Evidence collected from and near her body has never been tested, and prosecutors say that Mr. Alley, who entered an insanity defense at his trial in 1987, first claimed he was innocent in 2004.

The state has opposed DNA tests, saying he forfeited any right to them by waiting so long to ask. Mr. Alley and his lawyers have been unable to persuade state or federal courts that he is entitled to them.

-Rudey