Supreme Court Rejects Appeal in Memphis Death-Penalty Case
By KEVIN SACK
ATLANTA, Feb. 26 - The United States Supreme Court dismissed an appeal today for a new hearing for a Tennessee man who has argued that recanted eyewitness testimony and new ballistics evidence is sufficient to overturn his conviction in the 1981 murder of a Memphis police officer.
The court's rejection, which was issued without comment, eliminates what lawyers for the man, Philip Ray Workman, said was his best remaining chance of avoiding the death penalty.
Mr. Workman still has a clemency application pending before Gov. Don Sundquist, a Republican. But his lawyers are not optimistic given the governor's support for the death penalty and a recent unanimous recommendation against clemency by the state board of probation and parole.
"I think we can pretty well tell what his decision will be," said Jefferson T. Dorsey, one of Mr. Workman's lawyers. "We can file the usual last-minute stuff, but this was our best hope."
Mr. Workman, 47, has never denied that he robbed a Wendy's restaurant and that he fired two shots from his .45-caliber handgun as he struggled with police officers while trying to flee. When told that one officer, Lt. Ronald Oliver, had been killed, Mr. Workman originally assumed he had fired the fatal shot.
The death slug, however, was never definitively identified. And Mr. Workman's lawyers say that autopsy results and ballistics tests suggest that Mr. Oliver was killed by a .38- caliber bullet fired by another officer. They also have asked the courts to consider a videotaped recantation by a man who had claimed at the trial to have witnessed the crime.
Though the courts have granted Mr. Workman several last-minute reprieves, his lawyers have failed at every level to win a full hearing on their new evidence. That evidence was dismissed as inconsequential by the probation and parole board last month. The State Supreme Court will now set a new execution date.
"It's a complete letdown," Mr. Dorsey said. "We had high hopes that the United States Supreme Court would finally step in and we'd finally see justice in this case. This just feels empty and hollow."