NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – The daughter of a Tennessee man executed 14 years ago for murder wants to test DNA evidence to prove his innocence. If the effort is successful, it would be the first time such evidence was used to prove someone was wrongly executed in the U.S.
Attorneys for April Alley presented arguments before the state appeals court on Wednesday.
Her father, Sedley Alley, died by lethal injection in 2006 after being convicted of the murder of Marine Lance Cpl. Suzanne Collins two decades earlier. Alley confessed to the crime, but later said the confession was coerced.
The process would have ended there if investigators in a Missouri murder case hadn’t contacted the Innocence Project in 2019 about a possible connection between Collins and a suspect there. Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project, had argued unsuccessfully for DNA testing in Alley’s case shortly before his execution.
Spurred by the idea of an alternate suspect, April Alley, as the executor of her father’s estate, petitioned a Memphis court in April 2019 to order DNA testing. The court ruled in November of that year that April Alley did not have legal standing to make that request. She appealed to the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals, which heard oral arguments in the case on Wednesday.