Condemned murderer Erskine Leroy Johnson might not...

Condemned murderer Erskine Leroy Johnson might not have to stay on death row much longer because the Tennessee Supreme Court ordered a new sentencing hearing for him. Justices unanimously ruled prosecutors improperly withheld "material, exculpatory evidence" at his original sentencing hearing. Johnson was convicted of killing a grocery store manager during a 1983 robbery in Memphis. At some point during the robbery, someone fired a bullet that went through a Pac-Man machine and grazed a 16-year-old girl in the chest. The girl survived, but prosecutors withheld a police report concluding Johnson could not have fired that bullet. The court upheld a previous Court of Criminal Appeals ruling reversing the dismissal of Johnson's petition and remanding the case for a new sentencing hearing. Justices agreed that the police report should have been disclosed before sentencing and that "the state's failure to disclose this police report severely undermines our confidence in the jury's sentence of death." )