A Georgia law governing DNA testing used in capital crime cases is unconstitutional because it allows courts to decide whether death row inmates are using bids to reopen evidence as a means to delay their execution, according to a federal lawsuit.

A Georgia death row inmate who was denied a chance to obtain new DNA testing in the deadly beating of an elderly woman in 1998 said in a lawsuit filed Wednesday that the state law governing the testing is unconstitutional, as it allows courts to judge whether convicts are using a bid to reopen evidence as a means to delay their execution.

John Anthony Esposito, convicted of the kidnapping and murder of 90-year-old Lola Davis, said in the lawsuit that updated DNA testing could have showed it was his then-girlfriend who carried out Davis' killing. But the relevant Georgia statute barring new evidence testing as a stalling tactic blocked his bid at exoneration, the complaint said.

Capital defendants, Esposito argued, are the only ones in Georgia who face such a barrier, and the law sets up an ambiguous deadline as to when the motion must be filed.

"As such, the statute and its definitive interpretation by Georgia courts violate the Equal Protection Clause because they treat capital defendants differently from non-capital defendants in a manner that does not rationally promote any legitimate government interest," Esposito said in a suit that names state Attorney General Chris Carr, Ocmulgee District Attorney T. Wright Barksdale III, Baldwin County Clerk of Superior Court Wanda Paul and Monroe County Sheriff Robert Markley as defendants.

"It instead creates an unacceptable risk that the state may execute a person despite the existence of evidence that would likely have resulted in a lesser sentence," he added.

Esposito and his then-girlfriend Alicia Woodward were convicted some 26 years ago of kidnapping Davis from North Carolina and taking her to east Georgia's Morgan County, according to the complaint and court records. There, Davis was beaten to death, before the couple is alleged to have traveled to Oklahoma, kidnapped an elderly couple — Larry and Marguerite Snider — and killed them in Texas.

After they were arrested and extradited to Georgia, Esposito said he initially took full responsibility for the slayings in an unrecorded interview with the FBI. Woodward later took a guilty plea and is serving a life sentence in a south Georgia prison.

But Esposito, who remains on Georgia's death row, said his initial confession was the only evidence that ever fingered him as the one who beat Davis to death. And the local district attorney used that evidence — that he was the one "who actually did the beating, the one that did the physical beating" — to persuade a Peach State jury to not just convict him, but sentence him to death.

Esposito now says that five key pieces of physical evidence, which couldn't be tested for DNA at the time of his trial because the technology didn't exist, could prove that he neither killed Davis nor the Sniders or at least show that "Ms. Woodward (was) the more culpable defendant."

To that end, per the complaint, Esposito filed an extraordinary motion for new trial, or EMNT, which defendants in Georgia are granted only once after their conviction. But a county judge ruled in the state's favor, finding that the pieces of evidence may not have been kept in proper chain of custody, that the evidence was unlikely to change Esposito's conviction or sentence, and that Esposito could have filed the motion years earlier, suggesting it was a bid to delay his execution.

While Esposito took issue with the judge's reasoning throughout, it was the final issue that's the basis of his lawsuit.

For one, Esposito said, his motion for a new trial was filed not at the eleventh hour, but while all of Georgia's executions were stayed during the coronavirus pandemic — thus, his execution was far from imminent.

"It is clear that Mr. Esposito's EMNT delayed nothing and that Mr. Esposito had no reason to expect that it would," he said.

But the more fundamental issue is the unconstitutionality of the delay evaluation itself.

"By making 'delay' a dispositive focus — a concept that applies only to death-sentenced individuals — and without requiring the courts to assess the other legitimate reasons for filing the motion for DNA testing … the Georgia statute and courts have imposed an unfair barrier to capital litigants specifically, one that is not designed to discourage frivolous last-minute litigation," he said.

Esposito is represented by Marcia A. Widder and Anna Arceneaux of the Georgia Resource Center.

Counsel information for the defendants was not immediately available.

The case is Esposito v. Carr et al., case number unavailable, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

--Editing by Michael Watanabe.