Court takes death penalty, clinic protest cases

Published: 2005-06-29

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The Supreme Court June 28 announced it would hear an appeal next term about DNA evidence in a death penalty case and that it would for the third time look into a racketeering case against abortion clinic protesters. The court also let stand a handful of rulings that restricted religious displays at public schools and in a courtroom in Ohio and governed how a South Carolina town council prays at the start of its meetings. Action on those cases apparently was pending until the court handed down rulings a day earlier in two cases involving displays of the Ten Commandments in Kentucky courthouses and on the grounds of the Texas Capitol. The death penalty case involves an inmate on Tennessee's death row who is trying to be exonerated or at least win a new trial at which he can present DNA results and other evidence that was not available at the time of his conviction for a 1985 murder.

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