Washington – With Justice Samuel Alito Jr. writing his first opinion, the Supreme Court on Monday overturned the murder conviction of a South Carolina man and said his lawyers had been wrongly barred from telling the jury that another man committed the crime.
“The Constitution guarantees criminal defendants a meaningful opportunity to present a complete defense,” Alito said for a unanimous court.
The decision strikes down an unusual rule in South Carolina that allowed judges to short-circuit a defendant’s case before the trial.
While there are few real-life Perry Masons, defense lawyers often seek to prove their client’s innocence by showing that another person may be guilty of the crime.
However, South Carolina’s judges said that if the prosecution has strong evidence of a defendant’s guilt, the defense can be barred from presenting evidence that points squarely to another suspect.
Alito said this rule “is no more logical than its converse would be” – a rule that would throw out the prosecution’s evidence whenever the defendant had a strong alibi.
“By evaluating the strength of only one party’s evidence, no logical conclusion can be reached regarding the strength of contrary evidence offered by the other side to rebut or cast doubt,” he wrote.
The case began on New Year’s Eve in 1989 when an 86-year old South Carolina woman was beaten, robbed and assaulted in her home. She later died of her injuries. Bobby Lee Holmes had been involved in a fight earlier in the evening and fled from police.
He was arrested and charged with the woman’s murder. Blood and fingerprint evidence linked Holmes to the crime.
His lawyers said Holmes was innocent and pointed to witnesses who had seen another man, Jimmy White, near the woman’s house on the night of the murder. Four witnesses told a preliminary hearing they had heard White admit to the crime or say Holmes was innocent.
Nonetheless, the judge excluded this evidence from Holmes’ trial because prosecutors had “strong forensic evidence” of his guilt.
He was convicted and sentenced to death.
