DNA Testing Rules Get High Court Hearing in Innocence Case (1)

Whether a Texas death-row inmate is executed for a crime he says he didn’t commit could hinge on a technical ruling by the US Supreme Court about statutes of limitations.

Hearing argument Tuesday in Rodney Reed’s appeal, the justices considered two ways to measure when federal civil-rights claims involving state DNA-testing procedures must be brought.

Reed says the clock starts at the end of state-court litigation denying crime-scene evidence testing—including appeals—while Texas officials say it starts when the state trial court denies testing.

Justices’ questions to both sides during the argument left the outcome unclear in the case that has ...