Birmingham Blues

Or maybe Bob Riley, who, inexplicably, doesn’t want to permit DNA testing in death penalty cases. Alabama is now one of only eight states that won’t give inmates at least some access to DNA evidence that wasn’t available at their trials.

State lawmakers across the country are adopting broad changes to criminal justice procedures as a response to the exoneration of more than 200 convicts through the use of DNA evidence.

All but eight states now give inmates varying degrees of access to DNA evidence that might not have been available at the time of their convictions. Many states are also overhauling the way witnesses identify suspects, crime labs handle evidence and informants are used.

At least six states have created commissions to expedite cases of those wrongfully convicted or to consider changes to criminal justice procedures. One of them, the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, will hold a hearing this month on remedies for people who have been wrongfully convicted.

Laws in several states, including Illinois, New Jersey and North Carolina, have bipartisan backing, with many Democrats supportive on civil rights grounds and Republicans generally hoping that tighter procedures will lead to fewer challenges of convictions.

Seems to me both of those are good reasons for reform. As the statistics in the article show, people are wrongly convicted of crimes in the United States. They may not be the nicest, most upstanding citizens. Some of them may be criminals. But if the wrong person is convicted, the right person will never face punishment for that crime. Not only do we wrongly imprison, possibly execute, an innocent person, but the victims and their families don’t get real justice.

Nationwide, misidentification by witnesses led to wrongful convictions in 75 percent of the 207 instances in which prisoners have been exonerated over the last decade, according to the Innocence Project, a group in New York that investigates wrongful convictions…

…In a 2005 study, a University of Michigan Law School professor, Samuel R. Gross, estimated that 340 prisoners sentenced from 1989 to 2003 had been exonerated. Of those, 205 were convicted of murder and 121 of rape. Half of the wrongful murder convictions and 88 percent of the wrongful rape convictions included false eyewitness identification, the study found.

DNA evidence was used to exonerate 144 of those inmates.

In a 2007 study, Professor Gross analyzed 3,792 death sentences imposed from 1973 to 1989 and found that 86 death row inmates, or 2.3 percent, had been exonerated through 2004.

Professor Gross said the total number of innocent prisoners was likely to be far higher. In his view, well-documented wrongful convictions in capital cases provided a window on systemic problems, with even larger numbers of convictions for less serious and less publicized convictions.

“Of the 340 exonerations I looked at” in the 2005 study, Professor Gross said, “96 percent are for rape and murder.” He added: “Does that mean nobody was wrongfully convicted for drug possession, or drunk driving or burglary? Chances are there are many, many more false convictions for lesser crimes.” The most recent prisoner to be exonerated by DNA evidence was Dwayne Allen Dail, who served 18 years in North Carolina for a false conviction of child rape. Prosecutors had used the victim’s identification of Mr. Dail and hair found at the crime scene to convict him. Years later, after repeated inquires from defense lawyers, the police found a box of additional evidence in the case that contained the victim’s semen-stained nightgown. DNA analysis ruled out Mr. Dail and implicated another man. Mr. Dail was released from prison in August.

If the evidence is available, whether at trial or on appeal, it should at the very least be evaluated. It may exonerate an innocent person. It may very well reinforce the state’s case against a guilty defendant. Either of those outcomes is a good thing.

Here in Alabama, Thomas Arthur faces execution for the 1982 contract murder of Troy Wicker, Jr. There is DNA evidence available that could not be evaluated at the time of his trial because the technology did not exist. It does now. The Innocence Project has called for DNA tests before the execution is carried out. And someone else wants those tests: the victim’s sister. She wants to know, as much as it is humanly possible to know, that the right person will face punishment for her brother’s murder. Bob Riley has granted Arthur a 45-day stay because the state is changing its lethal injection protocol, but he refuses to order the requested tests.

Thomas Arthur is not a nice person. He’s not an upstanding citizen. He had a prior murder conviction. He shot (but thankfully did not kill) a prison guard during an escape attempt before his final conviction. He shouldn’t get out of prison. But if he didn’t kill Troy Wicker, he shouldn’t die for it.

And if we, as citizens of this country, won’t demand that DNA evidence be evaluated before we carry out the ultimate penalty, well, that doesn’t speak too well of us as a society. “Kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out” may be good campaign strategy, but it’s a terrible way to run a justice system.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 1st, 2007 at 2:06 pm and is filed under Justice System. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.