In a 5-4 ruling this month, the U.S. Supreme Court decided there was no constitutional right to post-conviction DNA testing. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts argued that the federal courts’ answers to questions of post-conviction DNA rights would not be any better than those of state courts and legislatures.
In the interest of full disclosure, I spent a year working as a volunteer for the Innocence Project of Texas, a non-profit organization advocating for the wrongfully convicted.
But despite what the chief justice said, in states like Alabama, Alaska, Massachusetts and Oklahoma, federal courts have the potential to easily surpass state courts and legislatures in deciding when to allow DNA tests. These four states currently have no effective laws addressing a convicted individual’s right to a DNA test. And in a country with a criminal justice system proved to be imperfect time and again, there is simply no rationale for the Supreme Court to dismiss an opportunity to provide countless citizens in those states the right to a determinative and ultimate answer as to their guilt or innocence in the crimes for which they endure punishment.
Supporters of the court’s ruling will line up behind Justice Samuel Alito, who, in his concurring opinion, argues that it would be costly to give prisoners “a never before recognized right to rummage through the state’s genetic evidence locker.” Alito goes further, warning of the possibility that a prisoner “could demand DNA testing in the hope that some happy accident — for example, degradation or contamination of the evidence — would provide the basis for seeking post-conviction relief.”
Alito’s argument is a weak one. The possibility of a “happy accident” is unquestionably slim. But if such an accident occurred, it would reflect the problem of improperly stored biological evidence — not the fact that a single DNA test can set a man free or put an indisputable rapist behind bars. Thanks to the advancements of science in the past few years, DNA tests now achieve a beautiful finality to cases, which our criminal justice system has hungered for since its creation.
Even Texas, a state notorious for its flawed criminal justice system, has managed to recognize the need to stablish due process for the convicted who seek DNA testing. The state has risen from the ashes of its unjust past and fashioned itself as a leader in this country, moving forward in support of science that sets the truth free.
Consider Dallas County, where, largely because of systematic review of post-conviction claims by the district attorney, 19 individuals have been exonerated with post-conviction DNA testing. Or Harris County, where prosecutors recently established a Conviction Integrity Unit. Or the Texas Legislature, which approved a program this past session to give compensation and social services to exonerated citizens.
Texas’ DNA track record has proven to the nation that there are effective ways to establish due process for post-conviction DNA testing. A myriad of stringent requirements is imposed on any individual in Texas seeking post-conviction relief. Listed in Chapter 64 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, the restrictions serve to narrow the number of people who will ever get a DNA test and thereby discredits the argument that criminals have unfettered access to as many DNA tests as they want at the state’s expense.
In addition to those restrictions, most prosecutors in the state, unlike those in Dallas and Harris Counties, still continue to put tremendous effort into stopping the convicted from getting DNA testing.
Those on both sides of the issue will tell you that only a few cases exist in which a DNA test will be exculpatory, which favors the defendant. The facts of a case and the manner in which DNA evidence is left behind dictate whether a DNA test will be determinative of guilt or innocence.
Typically, cases involving rape hinge greatly on DNA testing because the biological evidence in those crimes points so directly to the guilty.
But by dismissing potentially determinative post-conviction DNA testing as a process not guaranteed by the Constitution, the Supreme Court ignored countless people in Alabama, Alaska, Massachusetts and Oklahoma seeking DNA testing who may not have had the benefit of science’s advances when they were convicted, and therefore may be wrongfully imprisoned.
That thought alone should keep the five opposing justices up at night, concerned that their ruling denies a basic constitutional right and undermines our precious judicial system.
Jacob is an incoming freshman.
