the S.C. Supreme Court reverses death penalty ruling...

the S.C. Supreme Court reverses death penalty ruling for the first man in state to receive death sentence for killing fetus.
The justices in a 3-2 vote said Joseph Lee Ard, 35, deserved a new trial because his lawyers in his 1996 trial didn't thoroughly challenge gunshot residue evidence.
Ard was accused of shooting to death his 17-year-old pregnant girlfriend, Madalyn Coffey, on April 23, 1993. She was 35 weeks pregnant at the time; the fetus died of a lack of oxygen, authorities said.
Ard was sentenced to death in April 1996 on 2 counts of murder — 1 of them involving the fetus. A 1984 state Supreme Court case said a fetus can be treated as a person in homicide laws if it could have lived apart from its mother.
Ard contended the shooting was accidental, testifying at his trial that Coffey brandished a pistol during an argument and it went off as he grabbed for it.