FLORIDA - Court grants death row inmate new trial � again

A death row inmate twice convicted of beating, stabbing, strangling and raping a Jacksonville woman deserves a 3rd trial because DNA evidence used in his case didn't meet scientific standards, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.It's the 2nd time Gerald Murray has won a new trial because of DNA.In other rulings Thursday, the high court rejected appeals from 3 death row inmates.Murray, 33, was on death row for the September 1990 murder of Alice Vest.His conviction rested, in part, on a hair that was found at the crime scene.

 The state offered evidence that Murray's DNA matched the hair, using an analysis that is employed when the sample to be tested is small.But in April 1997, the high court overturned his conviction and sentence, ruling that the trial judge didn't meet standards for admitting DNA evidence.

 The unanimous decision also said the state failed to show why the DNA analysis should be allowed and that its expert wasn't qualified.Murray was retried in February 1999, convicted and condemned again.In Thursday's 5-2 decision, the court agreed with Murray that the DNA evidence should not have been admitted because the way it was tested didn't meet scientific standards.Justices Leander Shaw, Barbara Pariente and Peggy Quince concurred in the majority opinion. Chief Justice Harry Lee Anstead and Justice R. Fred Lewis supported the result only. Justices Charles Wells and Major Harding dissented.A co-defendant, Steven Taylor, was also convicted and sentenced to death. He's still on death row.The death row inmates who lost appeals Thursday:- Roger Lee Cherry, 51, condemned for the murder of Ester Wayne, an elderly woman who was fatally beaten in her DeLand home during a 1986 burglary. Her husband, Leonard, died of a heart attack during the burglary;- Micah Nelson, 26, condemned for the 1997 murder of 78-year-old Virginia Brace, who was raped in her Polk County home, stuffed in her car trunk, driven around for several hours and then strangled and beaten in an orange grove;- Norman Grim Jr., 42, on death row for the 1998 murder of Cynthia Campbell, whose body was stuffed into a garbage bag and thrown in Pensacola Bay. Campbell was fatally beaten, stabbed and raped.