Senior Judge Donald P. Harris has ordered a new murder trial for Gussie Vann

Senior Judge Donald P. Harris has ordered a new murder trial for Gussie Vann, sentenced to die for the rape and murder of his 8-year-old daughter Necia in 1992. Vann, 57, is currently on Tennessee's death row, at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. According to judge Harris, Vann should be retried, because his original defense attorneys did not hire forensic experts to refute the state's claims of rape. During the trial, experts called by the state testified the body Necia showed signs of repeated sexual abuse. Vann and his wife Bernice denied their daughter was sexually abused. At one point, they also claimed Necia hanged herself by accident. Bernice Vann later pled guilty in the case and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. During a September hearing on the request for the new trial, forensic experts testified there were no signs of sexual abuse as reported in the autopsy prepared by a former medical examiner.