Magistrate Judge Timothy P. Greeley of the Federal District Court in Marquette, Mich., recommended that the request be denied because it was filed too late. Judge Greeley did not seem to give the matter much thought or care, as he mistakenly asserted in his opinion that Mr. Perkins “was convicted pursuant to a guilty plea” rather than after a trial at which he had maintained his innocence and testified in his own defense.

Mr. Perkins appealed, and Judge Robert Holmes Bell of the Federal District Court in Grand Rapids accepted the magistrate judge’s recommendation. Judge Bell did also briefly consider the new evidence. He was unimpressed, saying it was a variation on a theme presented at trial — that Mr. Perkins “was being framed by the prosecution’s lead witness, who himself was responsible for the murder.”

The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati, reversed that ruling. It ordered Judge Bell to consider whether the new evidence was credible enough to warrant full consideration despite the fact that Mr. Perkins had filed his petition after a deadline that would ordinarily have elapsed in 2003, a year after the last piece of evidence came to light.

Officials in Michigan appealed to the Supreme Court, saying that deadlines are deadlines. Alabama and nine other states filed a supporting brief cautioning that “unscrupulous prisoners falsely claim that they are innocent all the time.” The justices will probably hear arguments in the case, McQuiggin v. Perkins, No. 12-126, in February.

The lower courts in Mr. Perkins’s case, along with briefs in the Supreme Court, seem to take for granted that he should lose if there is a legal requirement that claims of innocence be pursued diligently.

But there is another way to look at it. Documents in the court file suggest that Mr. Perkins actually tried pretty hard given his circumstances. Just before one deadline, he told Judge Bell in a handwritten filing, “petitioner’s legal documents and much of his personal property was destroyed” by prison personnel “following petitioner’s involvement in inciting a riot.”

“After which,” Mr. Perkins continued, “petitioner was denied access to the law library and law materials while he was held in solitary confinement” for almost five years. He said he continued to seek legal help and to work on his case “as much as one could have done being confined to solitary.”