Incredibly, Willie’s motion for rehearing was denied on May 2 2013. The court was split 5:4 as before.

As before, the group of 5 judges chose to use only the prosecution records when assessing the evidence as ‘conclusive, overwhelming evidence of guilt’ which made DNA testing superfluous. This is not the usual way of evaluating the records: normally the complete trial and post-conviction records are used, comprising both prosecution and defense arguments. In cases where exonerations have been proved using DNA evidence, the testing of the biological evidence would not have happened if the reviewing court had looked exclusively at the State’s case.

Read a report about this at the San Francisco Chronicle.