When the courts convict the wrong person

From an editorial in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

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 many states have laws allowing prisoners access to DNA testing, six 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 black 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, Pa., 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.

In Burlington County, N.J., 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.