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Arkansas Supreme Court Decision Allows New DNA Testing in Case of the ​“West Memphis Three,” Convicted of Killing Three Children in 1993

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On April 18, 2024, the Arkansas Supreme Court decided 4-3 to reverse a 2022 lower court decision and allow genetic testing of crime scene evidence from the 1993 killing of three eight-year-old boys in West Memphis. The three men convicted in 1994 for the killings were released in 2011 after taking an Alford plea, in which they maintained their innocence but plead guilty to the crime, in exchange for 18 years’ time served and 10 years of a suspended sentence. 

India | Nirbhaya convict's lawyer questions Tihar Jail report

The court of additional sessions judge Dharmender Rana had reserved the order after hearing arguments from both sides in the matter.

Advocate AP Singh, lawyer of convict Vinay Sharma in the Nirbhaya gang-rape and murder case, on Saturday alleged that Tihar Jail filed a fabricated report in the court on an application seeking high-level medical treatment for the convict's claimed head injury, arm fracture, insanity, mental illness and schizophrenia.

"Today Tihar Jail filed a fabricated and false report before the court on the application. I made the submission in the court that when I met Vinay Sharma on February 18, the entire incident was videographed. I sought to call for a report of the videography," Singh told reporters after the hearing.

Singh said that people will find out "how he (Vinay) was brought to him by several people and whether there was a plaster on his hand."

"If there is no plaster on his hand in the video, I will quit practising law. Jail authorities are hiding the mental condition of the convict to prevent the death penalty from being stayed," he said.

"All I am saying is that if he is treated, it will not go down in the history that even an insane person was hanged in India. What will the WHO and international platform say?" Singh added.

During the hearing, Tihar Jail authorities informed the court that there was no medical history of mental instability for Vinay Sharma.

The court of additional sessions judge Dharmender Rana had reserved the order after hearing arguments from both sides in the matter.

Singh had filed an application seeking high-level medical treatment for Vinay, who according to the application, sustained a "grievous head injury, fracture in his right arm, insanity, mental illness, and schizophrenia".

"At the time of a legal meeting with counsel and convict, and family meeting with the convict, it was a very serious matter that the convict -- Vinay Sharma -- could not identify his counsel and mother in jail," the application said.

Meanwhile, a fresh death warrant has been issued for the four death row convicts -- Vinay Sharma, Akshay Thakur, Pawan Gupta, and Mukesh Singh -- in the 2012 Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case for their hanging at 6 am on March 3.

The case pertains to the brutal gang-rape and killing of a 23-year-old paramedical student in a moving bus on the night of December 16, 2012, by six people including a juvenile in Delhi. 

The woman had died at a Singapore hospital a few days later.

Source: ANI, Staff, February 22, 2020


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