MEMPHIS, Tn. – The New York Times reports that a Memphis judge ruled today that DNA testing of evidence will not be allowed in this case.
Thirteen years after Sedley Alley was executed for a 1985 killing in Tennessee, his daughter is seeking DNA evidence testing in an effort to exonerate her father. She suggests that a Missouri man charged in a 2018 killing could be a suspect.
Innocence Project co-founder Barry Scheck represents Alley’s daughter, April Alley. Scheck told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Missouri authorities say Thomas Bruce took an avionics course in Millington, Tennessee, around the time that Suzanne Collins, a 19-year-old Marine, was killed in Millington. Bruce matches a vague suspect description distributed by police.
Bruce is jailed in St. Louis County, accused of sexually assaulting two women and killing a third in a Catholic Supply store last November.
Scheck argued in October that she should be allowed to petition for new DNA testing of a pair of men’s underwear recovered at the Tennessee scene on behalf of her father’s estate.
Bruce’s attorney declined to comment.
