Death Row lawyers have 24 hours to save Briton

Lawyers fighting to halt the execution of a British man due to die by lethal injection in the United States tomorrow have uncovered crucial evidence that they claim will prove his innocence.

Unseen police and forensic science reports are said to show that Jackie Elliott, who has spent 16 years on Death Row in Texas, did not take part in the rape and murder of an American teenager. Elliott, 42, has always protested his innocence and claims he was convicted only because of the testimony of police informers covering their own guilt.

A new report by the world's leading forensic scientist on blood "splattering" indicates Elliott is unlikely to have been the murderer. Dr Herbert McDonnell, the father of modern blood-splatter analysis who testified in the O J Simpson trial, has re-examined the blood evidence from the original trial.

His report rejects the forensic analysis submitted by the state's expert witness, which he describes as flawed. Dr McDonnell says: "It is more likely that Jackie was standing in the line of blood splatter which was projected down over [the victim's] body than it was that he was standing above her."

The victim, Joyce Munguia, 18, was gang-raped and then beaten to death with a motorcycle chain beneath an underpass in Austin, Texas, in 1986.

"It is well known," says Dr McDonnell, "by those who have studied beating mechanisms that blood does not splatter up on to the person who is administering a beating but rather it is projected away from them. This has been shown repeatedly by many scientists who have researched this very phenomenon."

In the past few days Elliott's team of British and American lawyers has unearthed 40 police reports, allegedly suppressed by the prosecution, that identify other key suspects.

Elliott, born in Felixstowe, Suffolk, to American parents working at the nearby Bent- waters Air Force Base, admits he was at the crime scene but denies taking part in the killing.

At the heart of his final appeal is the presence of blood and semen stains from other suspects capable of modern DNA analysis but which have never been properly tested.

Lawyers argue that the judge due to hear Elliott's clemency plea today should withdraw because he has written to the media and others saying: "Never have I come into contact with a defendant more deserving of the ultimate penalty than Mr Elliott."

Elliott's lead attorney, Clive Stafford Smith, said: "It is very difficult to see how any reason-able person could believe that he would be fair in Jackie's DNA hearing when, without having heard ... our newly discovered evidence of innocence, he would say that."

Kevin McNamara, MP for Hull North, is among MPs and anti-death penalty campaigners, including the British organisation Reprieve, supporting Elliott's appeal. "We are in very serious danger of witnessing a massive miscarriage of justice against a British subject," he said.

"It is inconceivable – particularly at this time – that the President of the US would not wish to bring to bear all the force of his office to prevent the execution of a citizen of his greatest ally, while any question still remains as to their guilt."