Sedley and April Alley
It would be relatively easy to determine whether the state of Tennessee executed an innocent man in 2006, when Sedley Alley was killed by lethal injection. Testing of DNA evidence from the crime scene — blocked by the Tennessee Supreme Court ahead of Alley's execution in a decision it has since said was wrong — should reveal whether Alley really raped and murdered Suzanne Collins in 1985, a crime Alley told many people he did not remember committing.
But that answer will not be coming soon.
Shelby County Criminal Court Judge Paula Skahan released an order Monday dismissing the Alley estate's petition for DNA testing, writing that the estate does not have standing to file for the testing and, therefore, the court did not have jurisdiction to consider it. The order, Skahan wrote, "should not be treated as a ruling on the substantive claims raised in the petition for DNA testing."
Collins' 1985 murder was brutal. She was just 19 years old when she was attacked while jogging, struck at least 100 times — mostly around the head and neck — and strangled. She'd been sexually assaulted with a 30-inch tree branch that pierced her lung. Alley initially confessed to the crime, but his attorneys have long argued that his case had all the hallmarks of a false confession. They point to parts of his confession that matched police theories at the time, but ended up being false.
Alley's daughter April launched the effort in May along with Nashville-based Assistant Federal Public Defender Kelley Henry and Innocence Project co-founder Barry Scheck, among others. After Skahan's ruling on Monday, April said she was "heartbroken."
"Frankly, I’m numb," she said in a written statement released by the Innocence Project. "I’m very grateful for all who have supported me in this effort to find the truth. We will see this through to the end, no matter what it takes.”
The legal team also released a statement of its own:
We are very disappointed in today's decision and have already filed a notice of appeal. The petition simply asks for testing of available DNA evidence, which could be done within 30 to 60 days. It will now take months, if not years, to go through the courts to finally get to the truth in this matter.As the court noted in its decision today, the Tennessee Supreme Court acknowledged five years after Sedley Alley was executed that it made a mistake in denying his request for DNA testing just prior to his execution. If that testing had occurred 15 years ago, it’s possible the person who really committed this crime would have been identified and held accountable. If Tennessee executed an innocent person, we should know it, and the person who did it should be identified. Our client, April Alley, just wants the truth.
