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DNA pardons raise concern about justice
More articles on this topic: Death PenaltyDNA has the power to cut short nightmares — the horror of an innocent man behind bars for a crime someone else committed, the fear of a murderer walking free and looking to kill again.
In the past 16 years, DNA testing has freed scores of prisoners found to be wrongfully convicted, resolved old mysteries including murders and rapes, and transformed the debate over the death penalty. It has shaken the foundations of the criminal justice system.
DNA proved pivotal again Thursday, when an analysis confirmed that Roger Keith Coleman was indeed the man who raped, stabbed and nearly beheaded his sister-in-law, as a jury concluded.
Coleman was executed in 1992, proclaiming his innocence as he went to the electric chair.
The case was closely watched by both death penalty advocates and protesters because no executed convict in the United States has ever been exonerated by scientific testing.
Despite the lack of an explosive result in the Coleman case, the power of DNA is unquestioned and is sure to come into play again.
Advocates for reform remain convinced that there are other executions that need to be retested, sure that an innocent person somewhere along the way has been executed — even as prosecutors and courts have been hesitant to go back and revisit cases that juries and courts have deemed closed.
“There are many more like the Coleman case,” said defense attorney Barry Scheck, co-founder of the New York-based Innocence Project, a legal clinic that seeks to exonerate inmates through DNA testing.
“DNA has shown, whether it’s the death penalty or not, there are flaws with eyewitness testimony, false confessions and crime labs. We know many more people have been wrongfully convicted than anyone thought.”
It took years of effort to get DNA evidence accepted by the courts, with the first exoneration — of David Vasquez, convicted of second-degree murder in Virginia — coming in 1989.
It began with a trickle, and then became a flood. The 100th exoneration came in late 2001.
“There are all these cases. There’s a crescendo of cases, of innocence,” said Scheck.
Scheck and others such as Centurion Ministries, a New Jersey organization that investigated Coleman’s case and became convinced of his innocence, argue that with DNA tests exonerating 172 wrongfully convicted prisoners over the years, the technology raises bigger questions about the justice system itself.
By proving flaws, DNA raises doubts about other cases in which genetic testing doesn’t play a part. DNA only can help in cases where biological evidence ties the victim to the criminal, such as rape cases or murder cases where the criminal’s blood or skin — or maybe even a chewed-up piece of gum — is left behind.
But DNA evidence cuts both ways — as in the Coleman case.
Death-penalty supporters say DNA can help strengthen the case for capital punishment by determining with scientific certainty that those convicted are guilty.
Such supporters say they’re willing to support ways to curb flaws that lead to wrongful convictions — from presenting photo lineups of suspects to victims to videotaping police interrogations that can lead to false confessions.
But they dismiss allegations that DNA evidence proves the justice system is deeply flawed.
“That’s absolute hogwash,” said Joshua Marquis, district attorney of Clatsop County, Ore. “Wrongful convictions are episodic, not epidemic. They’re highly isolated, individual cases.”
He ticked off numbers — 172 exonerations out of some 15 million felonies. To take those numbers and argue they prove widespread mistakes — even while acknowledging they are only reflect a fraction of the flaws — unfairly distorts the picture.
“I have a broader faith in juries,” he said.
But there are a range of other doubts.
And the impact has hit everyone from police officers to judges. “It was a world-shattering event,” said Geoff Alpert, a criminal justice professor at the University of South Carolina. “It’s kind of like computers. That’s how my kids think of it. The before-and-after differences are enormous.”
New Jersey legislators just approved a moratorium on executions, which awaits the governor’s signature. Moratoriums are being considered in North Carolina and California.
That followed Illinois’ startling move in 2000 to suspend the death penalty after revelations of several wrongful convictions.
Questions driven by DNA reached the U.S. Supreme Court this week, as it weighed the desire to bring closure to criminal cases with concerns over how courts should treat newly discovered evidence of innocence years after a capital conviction.
Last summer, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens said DNA evidence has shown “that a substantial number of death sentences have been imposed erroneously.”
Echoing advocates of reform, he told a gathering of lawyers: “It indicates that there must be serious flaws in our administration of criminal justice.”
On top of that, executions have fallen in the last few years, down to 59 in 2004 and 60 last year, from a high of 98 in 1998 and 85 in 2000.
The exonerations are the cause, and the doubts they’ve raised about the death penalty and the justice system overall, said Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center.
“It cuts across liberal versus conservative lines, party lines. Everybody would agree that innocent people shouldn’t be executed.”
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