Supreme Court to criminal defendants: No DNA testing rights for you!
June 19, 2009 at 1:46 pm by Peter Schweitzer
Photo: State of Alaska ADF&G
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 on Thursday to deny convicts a constitutional right to DNA testing. It wasn’t a surprise. While acknowledging that DNA can provide powerful new evidence, the majority distinguished between those presumed innocent at the onset of a trial and those already convicted during a trial. In District Attorney’s Office for Third Judicial Dist. v. Osborne, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, “A criminal defendant proved guilty after a fair trial does not have the same liberty interests as a free man.”
That may be true, but what if the verdict arrived at by the jury was wrong? Roberts argument is a non sequitur. The purpose of DNA is to provide more certain evidence as to the party’s guilt or innocence. If DNA was not utilized in the court of first instance, how certain is the jury’s verdict of guilty in the first place?
Essentially, the Supreme Court ruling leaves the decision of whether to utilize DNA testing for convicts up to individual states. The real question up for debate yesterday was whether the Constitution’s Due Process clause requires states to offer the DNA testing.
The case heard before the Supreme Court yesterday involved a convict, William Osborne, who’d been found guilty of kidnap and rape in Alaska. The Innocence Project, an advocacy group representing Osborne’s interests before the Court, has noted that subsequent DNA testing has exonerated 240 previously guilty people since 1980.
In dissenting from the Roberts-led majority, Justice John Paul Stevens accused the majority of placing the finding of conviction over and above the question of justice. Stevens noted that Osborne was willing to pay for the DNA testing and that the burden of DNA testing to establish guilt or innocence was minimal.
Stevens dissenting point is well taken. I would prefer allowing a guilty person to go free rather than deprive an innocent man of his liberty.
If the Fourteenth Amendment is a due process clause that applies to states how come Alaska can treat its residents differently than say, Florida? I’m no legal scholar but I thought due process meant equal protection under the law.
