The case will provide the court's first occasion, in the years since exonerations based on DNA have become widespread, to reconsider the standards for reopening death penalty cases to present claims of innocence. Those standards, developed by the court in a series of cases in the early 1990's, are nearly impossible to meet.
The court's action on Tuesday came a day after the formal conclusion of the 2004-2005 term. The justices granted review in three new cases to be argued in the next term, which begins Oct. 3, while turning down several cases that might have given them an opportunity to elaborate on their two decisions on Monday about government displays of the Ten Commandments.
The justices were not actually on the bench, and there was no word of Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist's possible retirement plans.
The Tennessee inmate, Paul Gregory House, came within one vote of persuading a federal appeals court to reopen his case last October when the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, denied his petition for a writ of habeas corpus by a vote of 8 to 7. Of the seven dissenters, six concluded that he had proved his innocence, while the remaining judge said Mr. House was entitled, at least, to a new trial.
His Supreme Court appeal, filed by the federal defender's office in Knoxville, Tenn., is supported by a brief filed by the Innocence Project, a legal clinic in New York that has been a leader in the effort to use DNA evidence to challenge findings of guilt. Its brief said that the project's methods had proved the innocence of 155 people, in part by using DNA to refute seemingly airtight scientific evidence that the prosecution used to persuade the jury.
In Mr. House's case, the prosecution had claimed to the jury, based on blood typing, that semen stains found on the clothing of the murder victim were his. But DNA testing 15 years later showed that the stain was not Mr. House's semen but that of the victim's husband.
Since the prosecution's theory of the case was that Mr. House, a previously convicted sex offender, had murdered the victim after raping her, the new evidence shows that he was wrongly convicted, his lawyers maintain. In addition, the prosecution presented the evidence of rape as the "aggravating factor" for the jury to consider in deciding whether to sentence Mr. House to death.
Judge Gilbert S. Merritt, one of the dissenting judges on the Sixth Circuit, said in his opinion that "without any evidence of rape, the state has lost its motive, its theory of the case and the aggravating circumstance on which the state and the jury relied for its death verdict."
The majority, however, concluded that the fact that Mr. House did not rape the victim, a neighbor named Carolyn Muncey, did not prove that he did not murder her, and that the case against him remained strong. "We therefore conclude that he has fallen short of showing, as he must, that it is more likely than not that no reasonable juror would have convicted him in light of the new evidence," the majority said in an opinion by Judge Alan E. Norris.
All eight of the judges in the majority were appointed by Republican presidents, while all seven of the dissenting judges were appointed by Democrats.
Mr. House's Supreme Court appeal, House v. Bell, No. 04-8990, argues that the split on the appeals court mirrors general confusion among the federal appeals courts over how to evaluate similar claims of innocence on the basis of newly discovered evidence.
The Supreme Court's precedents set a high procedural threshold for presenting claims in federal court that were never made during the course of state court appeals. Under a 1995 decision, Schlup v. Delo, inmates seeking federal court review in such a circumstance must pass through a procedural "gateway" by establishing that the federal court's failure to hear the case would be a "fundamental miscarriage of justice." Such an exception to the usual procedural barriers should be "rare" and confined to an "extraordinary case," the court said.
Mr. House's lawyers argue that the justices should clarify that in deciding whether this standard has been met, and that a court should look at the evidence from the perspective of the jury and ask whether a juror, confronted with the new evidence, would have reasonable doubt about the verdict even if the new evidence did not completely dismantle the prosecution's case.
The Innocence Project's brief argues that objective scientific proof like DNA evidence should be given extra weight, especially when it refutes a "false fact" the prosecution has previously presented to jurors.
Abortion Protests
In another new case, the court entered for the third time a long-running dispute over the application of federal law to blockades of abortion clinics by anti-abortion groups.
The law at issue is the Hobbs Act, which outlaws the obstruction of commerce "by robbery or extortion." Two Hobbs Act violations, in turn, can demonstrate a "pattern of racketeering activity" that entitles victims to triple damages under the federal racketeering law known as RICO.
During the 1980's, at the peak of violent protests at abortion clinics, the National Organization for Women and two abortion clinics sued two anti-abortion groups, Operation Rescue and the Pro-Life Action League, under the Hobbs Act and were allowed to proceed with the lawsuit under a 1994 Supreme Court decision.
But after the plaintiffs won their case in the lower courts, the Supreme Court overturned the judgment in a second ruling two years ago that held that the protesters' behavior at the clinics did not amount to extortion, which the law defines as obtaining another's property through actual or threatened "force, violence, or fear." The 117 specific acts identified in the lawsuit did not meet that definition, the Supreme Court held.
That decision, in 2003, returned the case to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit which, instead of dismissing the lawsuit, kept the lawsuit alive on the basis of four additional acts of protest that the Supreme Court had not considered. All involved violence, and the appeals court ordered the federal district court in Chicago to determine whether those might fit the Hobbs Act definition.
In the new appeal, Scheidler v. National Organization for Women, No. 04-1244, the anti-abortion groups are arguing that the appeals court misread the Supreme Court's opinion and that the entire case should have been dismissed. The groups asked the justices for a summary reversal of the appeals court's ruling. Instead, the Supreme Court accepted the appeal for full briefing and argument.
Church and State
Without comment, the justices denied review in four cases on which they had deferred action while they were considering the two Ten Commandments cases.
Among these was an appeal by Harlan County, Ky., of a ruling that declared unconstitutional the posting of a Ten Commandments display in public school classrooms (Harlan County v. ACLU of Kentucky, No. 03-1698). Another was an appeal by the school board in Adams County, Ohio, of a ruling prohibiting it from posting Ten Commandments monuments outside five public school buildings (Johnson v. Baker, No. 03-1661).
The court also refused to hear an appeal by the town of Great Falls, S.C., of a ruling that it could not open its town council meetings with a prayer that invoked the name of Jesus Christ (Great Falls v. Wynne, No. 04-1052).