no DNA testing rights for you!
So, the Supremes voted 5-4 against an accused Alaskan prisoner's request to PAY FOR HIS OWN DNA TESTING to prove innocence in a rape case. You can guess who those 5 troglodytes were.
But why oh why did Obama's justice dept. have to sign on to this egregious decision?
As the NYT said today:
We are also puzzled and disturbed by the Obama administration's decision to side with Alaska in this case -- continuing the Bush administration's opposition to recognizing a right to access physical evidence for post-conviction DNA testing.
Moreover, as former FBI Director Williams S. Sessions wrote in Slate on Monday:
It's a generally laudatory goal for a new president to continue the DoJ polices of the previous one when he takes office. But a change in position may be warranted in some cases. Osborne is one of them. The Justice Department's decision is particularly perplexing because when President Obama was an Illinois state senator, he responded to that state's wrongful conviction problem by leading a bipartisan effort to help prevent convictions of the innocent, including laws allowing access to DNA evidence.
Only 4 states refuse to recognize prisoners' rights to DNA evidence, and many states don't even require that it be kept!
You'd think that in a democracy, lawmakers would find it
essential to guard citizens from wrongful imprisonment and execution. In the good old US of A, you'd be wrong, and this Supreme Court decision, aided and abetted by the Obama Justice dept., is another piece of evidence that the land of the free ain't so free . . .
You're right that this was a bad decision by both the USSC and the current DoJ.
One would think that advocates of capital punishment would favor testing laws at the state level (if only to decrease the possibility of wrongful executions). So it may be possible to fix the laws at the state level.
June 19, 2009 10:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
DoJ is probably looking more at the short term damage. DNA testing is getting cheaper every day. If the Supreme Court had sided with the prisoners, the DOJ/USSC might be facing a landslide of wrongful conviction suits, exonerations etc. Not good PR.
June 20, 2009 12:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well, I guess the Supremes want to leave it to the states. Most states have changed--evidently only Alaska, Oklahoma, and Massachusetts (!!)have not--but this is really just the beginning of the fight. Many states don't bother to collect or preserve the evidence, and then put up barriers to DNA as well as other exculpatory evidence (see, for example, Troy Davis's case in Georgia).
The possible existence of DNA evidence is apparently just an irritant for some over-zealous states and prosecutors. I read an interview (a few years ago, The New Yorker, can't remember more) with one prosecutor who, infuriated that DNA evidence overturned his case, insisted that "he knew" the accused was guilty.
June 20, 2009 12:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
Virtually all violent felons are guilty of the crime they are charged with. More than that, most are guilty of a litany of violent crimes they are not charged with, either because there is no credible complaint or incident the police can act on, or because of a defect in evidence or procedure which prevents prosecution. But for the tiny minority wrongfully charged or convicted, whether in capital or other felony crimes, there is no reason why possibly exculpatory evidence should be barred at any point in the process, even when defense counsels are gaming the process. We expect defense counsel to go for anything that works, whether it be jury nullification or other tampering with the process; technical defects in procedure or evidence; change of venue; or anything else they can dream up. We abide this because we require proof "beyond a reasonable doubt," to protect the citizen against the power of the state. These four and a half justices, bequeathed to us by the Reaganite politics so recently rejected, will always be out to protect the state and vested interests against the power of the citizens.
June 20, 2009 11:03 AM | Reply | Permalink