WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court granted a new hearing in federal court for a Tennessee death row inmate who was deprived of key evidence at his trial.

The justices on Tuesday ordered a review of the death sentence given to Gary Bradford Cone, who was convicted of beating an elderly couple to death in 1980.

Prosecutors belittled Cone's claims that he was a drug addict who suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome following military service in Vietnam. But it was later revealed that they withheld information that could substantiate Cone's claims.

Cone has never had a hearing that considered the concealed evidence and whether it justified converting his sentence from death to life in prison, his lawyer, Thomas Goldstein, told the justices during arguments in December.

"While we agree that the withheld documents were not material to the question whether Cone committed murder with the requisite mental state, the lower courts failed to adequately consider whether that same evidence was material to Cone's sentence," said Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote the majority opinion for the court.