JACKSON, Miss. (AP) -- The Mississippi Supreme Court has allowed death row inmate Eddie Lee Howard Jr. to go back to trial court to argue that his sentence should be thrown out.
The Supreme Court on Thursday ordered a Lowndes County judge to conduct a hearing into Howard's arguments that DNA testing exonerates him in the death of an elderly woman in 1992.
Howard, now 61, was convicted and sentenced to death in the slaying of 84-year-old Georgia Kemp of Columbus. Evidence against him included bite marks on her body.
The Supreme Court, in the order signed Thursday, made no specific mention of Howard's challenge to the bite mark evidence but did direct the lower court to determine if Howard's arguments of newly discovered evidence are cause for a new trial.
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