USA - Missouri. The Missouri Supreme Court threw out the 1st-degree murder convictions for Reginald Clemons

The Missouri Supreme Court threw out the 1st-degree murder convictions for Reginald Clemons, 44, Black. Clemons had been fighting his conviction and death sentence in the 1991 rape and killing of sisters Julie and Robin Kerry. In a 4-3 decision, the Court threw out the convictions and sentences for 1st-degree murder and sent the case back to circuit court. The state has 60 days to retry Clemons. If it does not, the case will be dismissed, and Clemons will remain in prison on a 15-year sentence in different case. Michael Manners, a retired judge appointed as by the state's highest court as "special master" to review Clemons' case, concluded that St. Louis prosecutors wrongly suppressed evidence and that detectives beat Clemons into confessing to the crimes. The judge said those factors were unlikely to change the verdict but were not harmless mistakes as the state claimed. Clemons was among 4 men convicted of raping and murdering sisters Julie Kerry, 20, and Robin Kerry, 19, on 5, April 1991. A jury convicted Clemons without physical evidence of rape. He was sentenced to death in 1993. In the past, he has acknowledged being on the bridge the night of the killings but claims police beat a confession out of him and was railroaded by an overzealous prosecutor. Manners also concluded that Clemons' death sentence "was not disproportionate," considering that Clemons' co-defendant, Marlin Gray, was executed for the crime in 2005. Police identified the suspects as Clemons, Gray, Antonio Richardson and Daniel Winfrey. Winfrey testified in exchange for a 30-year term and has been paroled. The others were sentenced to death. Gray was executed; Richardson's penalty was later changed to life without parole.