Engesser v. Young
Annotate this CaseAfter a jury trial, Defendant was convicted of vehicular homicide and two counts of vehicular battery. The sole issue at trial was whether Defendant or the deceased was driving the Corvette when it crashed into a minivan on Interstate 90. After the Supreme Court affirmed Defendant’s convictions, Defendant petitioned successively for habeas corpus relief in state and federal courts. In his fourth amended petition for habeas relief, Defendant asserted a freestanding claim of actual innocence and newly discovered evidence through another witness. The circuit court ruled found the witness’s testimony was newly discovered, that the testimony was credible, persuasive and compelling, and that the testimony established that the witness saw a woman driving a Corvette on Interstate 90 immediately prior to the accident. The circuit court granted Defendant’s request for a writ of habeas corpus, concluding that the newly discovered evidence, in light of the evidence as a whole, would create reasonable doubt of Defendant’s guilt in the mind of a reasonable juror. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that there was substantial evidence to support the circuit court’s conclusion that Defendant established by clear and convincing evidence that no reasonable juror would have found him guilty of the underlying offense.
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