New York Law Makers Aim To Ease Convicts’ Access To DNA Evidence
Four New York assemblymen last week introduced legislation aimed at making it easier for convicted criminals to use DNA evidence to prove their innocence, according to an article in the New York Sun.
The proposed laws - eight in all - could also help solve crimes by increasing standards for evidence preservation. A request for proposals to update the New York Police Department’s evidence storage system was sent out late last year after the city’s police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, appointed a working group to review procedures.
The bills that he and his colleagues are introducing would make it easier for prisoners to get DNA tests after they’ve been convicted, as well as set up a state “Innocence Commission” that would investigate exonerations and make recommendations to prevent future wrongful incarcerations, the Sun article said.
“DNA can convict the guilty, but it's for protecting the innocent,” said Joseph Lentol, chairman of the Assembly’s Codes Committee. “By protecting the innocent, we give the public a sense of fairness and justices that exists in the system.”
Since 1989, 14 convicted murderers in the United States owe their freedom -- and, in death penalty cases, their lives -- to the role DNA played in overturning their sentences. Some of these cases were due to the successful work of the Innocence Project, founded by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, pioneers in the use of DNA evidence in criminal cases, according a recent article in Inter Press News Service Agency. This article states that nearly 200 U.S. convictions for other crimes have been overturned using DNA evidence. The average amount of time the exonerated spent in prison was 12 years. They come from 31 of the 50 U.S. states.
Scheck says that the goal of this type of legislation is not only to help innocent people out of prison, but also to put the actual perpetrator behind bars. In some cases, post-conviction DNA tests have led to the arrest of criminals still prowling the streets. What happened in New York State, according to the Sun article, proves the need for such legislation. There were 23 exonerations in New York State in the last 16 months.
According to The Innocence Project’s Website 77 percent of post-conviction DNA exoneration cases in the U.S. involve mistaken eyewitness identification testimony, making it the leading cause of these wrongful convictions. Studies have shown that people are less able to recognize faces of a different race than their own. Among other reasons for wrongful conviction is what the Project calls “junk science” and lab errors and false confessions, incriminating statements and the use of jailhouse informants.
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