William "Junior" Pierce

By the same token, the prosecution may have a difficult time making the argument that Pierce waited too long to raise the question of DNA evidence. There is a point of law which says basically that if a petitioner waits too long to invoke a specific right, he loses that right, though it is unclear how that might apply to DNA evidence which has only within the last several years become a reliable tool in court.

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There is also the matter that Pierce's confession — which he later retracted, remains on the record, though the defense has presented evidence that the confession may have been beaten out of Pierce by then-Georgia Sheriff Red Carter.

What's more, Young and Pierce still have a formidable obstacle to cross in the fact that South Carolina law does frown on any more than one appeal in a case.

Cooper said that he expects to make his final ruling sometime before the end of the summer, possibly within the next several weeks.

And even if he does rule against Pierce — something he is by no means certain he will do — privately, he sort of hopes the case will not end there. Recently, Cooper has expressed the wish, an unusual wish for a judge to utter publicly, that the case will be taken up by the Innocence Project, a non-profit legal clinic founded by Barry Scheck at the Benjamin N. Cardoza School of Law at Yeshiva University to win freedom for wrongfully convicted defendants through the use of DNA evidence.

Cooper holds no real illusions. He realizes that Pierce is not a particularly attractive defendant. Even if he was ultimately cleared of the Cuttino slaying, he will still be serving a life sentence for three murders in Georgia, though there is some evidence to suggest that his conviction in some or all of those cases may have been based on formation squeezed out of Pierce using the same techniques Red Carter is alleged to have used to get him to confess to the Cuttino slaying.

All the same, Cooper said, "I still haven't abandoned the hope that even if I decide to dismiss this application that the Innocence Project might not be interested enough to get a bunch of college students out of the college of Charleston to just root around in every nook and cranny in Charleston to see if somehow or another, this stuff couldn't be turned up. Of course, this is not as sexy a case from their perspective as a case where, if we prevail and find this guy innocent, he walks out of prison."

Last week, the Crime Library contacted the Innocence Project and provided them with an outline of the facts and the history of the case. So far, no one has responded to a request for comment.

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