TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Kate Prince on Feb 4, 2021

Attorneys for the daughter of executed man Sedley Alley argued before the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals last week that DNA evidence should be tested to prove Alley’s innocence, the Associated Press reports. Alley died by lethal injection 14 years ago after being convicted of murder. His daughter, April Alley, petitioned a Memphis court to test the evidence in April 2019, after investigators in a Missouri murder case found a possible connection to an alternative suspect. That court ruled she did not have legal standing to make that request. Senior Assistant Attorney General Andrew Coulam argued yesterday that Sedley Alley’s estate is not entitled to seek testing. Paul Clement, representing April Alley, argued that the purpose of Tennessee’s DNA Analysis Act is to exonerate the innocent and to identify the true perpetrators of an offense. “Both purposes continue to be served even after a person has served his sentence or been executed,” Clement argued.