The Supreme court is weighing in on a test case for post conviction DNA testing in an old Texas murder case.
a recent Washington Post article By Robert Barnes covers this and the issues surrounding the case. Henry Skinner was convicted in Gray county, Texas 15 years ago over the deaths of his girlfriend and her two developmentally disabled adult sons. Efforts to get DNA evidence retested in so that at least a review of his verdict and sentence will be allowed have not succeeded so far. The uneven way different parts of Texas deal with appeals involving DNA or any new evidence is part of the reason why.
Texas courts said he didn't meet the requirements of a state law that grants DNA testing to some convicts. Federal courts said they had no proper role in second-guessing Texas.
Skinner came within 45 minutes of being strapped down for lethal injection before the Supreme Court stayed his execution to hear his case. The justices' decision could come at any time.
The important overall issue of changing the way DNA testing is allowed or not nationally needed a strong and clear test case. Many elements in Skinner's case raise questions but too much is ambiguous and Skinner has a lot of things going against him. But how likable or how upstanding or not a person was or is should not influence how they were found guilty or whether they are actually innocent or not.
In 2009 there was a Supreme court DNA testing case with a 5 to 4 ruling that avoided a number of important points by throwing the ball back to congress and the states over the issue of whether there is a "constitutional right" for DNA testing, but as the Post article says: "it left a slim opening for those trying to prove that a state's procedures were inadequate."
So the Skinner case review and hurdles are what you'd expect as part of the process that a "strict constructionist" court might approve. for exploring the right way to evolve the law.. messy uneven, delayed and ripe for more executions of innocent people. You would think that more people in Texas might have some misgivings now that the first ever proven execution in the modern era has been in Texas, the number one state sanctioned murder jurisdiction in the USA. The governor and the parole board certainly don't care but others do. So in the meantime the same contentious areas are argued over and there is little overall progress to change process and laws and success is a hard won, case by case struggle by the innocence project and others.
The oral arguments in Skinner v. Switzer traversed the legal landscape of habeas corpus reviews and federal civil rights laws,but bypassed the question most nonlawyers would have: Why not just test the evidence? If Skinner's crime had occurred in Dallas, instead of 350 miles northwest, the testing probably would have been done by now.
As is usual in so many requests for DNA testing the local prosecutor is reluctant to move forward with testing in this case and has many of the usual arguments against it. And this in a state that has an active and successful program in Dallas set up by Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins which has freed 21 people so far after DNA testing cleared them.
"When we free a person who didn't commit a crime, that's the work of a prosecutor," Watkins said. "A prosecutor's job is not just about convictions; it's about justice."
But there seems to be a decided reluctance among more conservative elements in the justice system whose inertia and obstruction is strong and pervasive. In the 2009 Roberts opined that there was obvious merit in DNA testing on old cases but reluctant to push any changes and in favor of letting states drag their feet.
The court's ruling two years ago acknowledged that the technology is relatively new and said it is appropriate for states to experiment with their policies, even if that results in conflicting laws.
"The dilemma is how to harness DNA's power to prove innocence without unnecessarily overthrowing the established system of criminal justice," Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote.
In other words post conviction DNA testing is a great thing but lets not assist in helping establish faster and more consistent implementation nationwide. The Justices might as well be saying: Better to let local jurisdictions delay changes or looking at too many probable injustices until those who have a stake in sustaining corrupt, incompetent or career enhancing convictions retire or no longer have any powerful allies.
But not all is lost...in the face of intransigent prosecutors who claim that many requests for DNA review are bogus, there was the admission by Alito that prisoners seeking DNA review are not all gaming the system just to be difficult. So, it seems that even the more stone-age justices can understand this.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said, "in the real world, a prisoner who wants access to DNA evidence is interested in overturning his conviction."
Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan said that Skinner was in something of a Catch-22, because he couldn't challenge the wrongfulness of his conviction without knowing the results of the DNA test.
Barry Scheck, co-director of the Innocence Project at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law basically says why not just do the tests? It is cheaper and quicker than litigating the issues.
But Switzer the prosecutor in this case trots out the usual arguments that seem to echo the more conservative Supreme court justices who opine that a legal result should be respected to the extent that execution of innocent people is fine since it is done legally... and with a subtext message of: you had your chance... too late now. And a corollary of budgets are tight, convicted but possibly innocent felons in serious cases should just give up for the good of the country and of course help jurisdictions avoid large payouts for unjust convictions. Neer mind that they spend years crying in the wilderness with the system and most of the public ignoring the plight and pleas of a very large but indeterminate number of wrongly convicted people.
"If defendants are allowed to 'game the system,' then we will never be able to rely on the finality of the judgments entered in their cases," Lynn Switzer, the Gray County district attorney, said in a statement.
".....ramifications for district attorneys all across the state, especially where the defendant waits so long before even filing a civil rights lawsuit."