Being certain



At least 232 people nationwide have been freed from prison after DNA
tests performed after their convictions showed they were innocent of
the crimes.
The U.S. Supreme Court is now deliberating on a case that could
establish that defendants have a constitutional right to DNA testing.
The court should affirm that right.
Although Pennsylvania and New Jersey have laws allowing prisoners
access to DNA testing, six states do not. One of them is Alaska,
where defendant William Osborne was convicted of raping a woman in 1993.
Osborne was convicted partly on a DNA test. But the technology at the
time wasn't highly specific; it determined only that Osborne belonged
to a group of about 15 percent of all African American males who
could have committed the crime. Now, Osborne is seeking a much more
accurate DNA test, called STR, that could prove his innocence or
guilt definitively.
The value of DNA as a tool in the criminal-justice system has been
demonstrated repeatedly. Of those 232 exonerated prisoners, 17 had
been sentenced to death.
Some high-profile local cases have proved the technology's
importance. There was Bruce Godschalk, convicted of raping two women
in Montgomery County in 1986. One victim identified Godschalk through
mug shots six months later; the other victim couldn't identify him.
Godschalk confessed after being interrogated for several hours; he
recanted later.
While he was behind bars, both his parents and his sister died. The
county district attorney's office opposed his efforts to get DNA
testing for seven years, but a federal court finally allowed it. The
results proved that the same man had raped both women, and that
Godschalk was not the man. After 15 years in prison, he was freed.
In Burlington County, Larry Peterson was convicted in 1989 of raping
and murdering a woman. He tried for about 10 years to get DNA
testing, which finally proved his innocence in 2005. He spent more
than 16 years in prison in a case in which prosecutors had sought the
death penalty. There's a case before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court
involving a Philadelphia man convicted of rape and murder who is
seeking a DNA test.
In many such cases, even when prosecutors are confronted with
irrefutable scientific proof of a prisoner's innocence, they drag
their feet in releasing the prisoner or clearing his record.
In the Alaska case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
ruled that the principle of due process required the state to turn
over exculpatory evidence even after a conviction. The Supreme Court
had ruled in 1963 that due process required the state to give a
defendant any evidence that might show his innocence before trial.
States argue that granting a right to post-conviction DNA testing
will "open the floodgates" to appeals. And the result probably would
be more burdensome for authorities. But that doesn't outweigh the
prospect of preventing long-term miscarriages of justice.
In far too many cases, DNA is showing that prosecutors had the wrong
guy all along.

http://www.philly. com/inquirer/ opinion/
20090306_Editorial_ _DNA_Testing. html