Word: dna
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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After taking a case, the first hurdle the Innocence Project faces is getting access to biological evidence. New York and Illinois have laws mandating post-conviction DNA testing. But everywhere else, it's up to the prosecutor--the same office that is being accused of sending an innocent person to jail. If the prosecutors cannot be persuaded or cajoled into turning over the evidence, the Innocence Project will go to court to demand...
About 60% of the samples the Innocence Project sends out for testing come back in their clients' favor. At that point, many prosecutors quickly concede and free the inmate. Earlier this year, the Innocence Project produced DNA showing that Calvin Johnson Jr. was innocent of a Clayton County, Ga., rape he had been convicted of in 1983. In June, the same district attorney who originally sent Johnson away persuaded a judge to free...
...prosecutors don't always give up that easily. The Buffalo D.A.'s office refused to release Vincent Jenkins even after DNA tests showed that semen recovered from the victim came from two men, neither of them Jenkins. Prosecutors insisted that the victim could have been raped by several men, including Jenkins, but that he didn't ejaculate. The prosecutors later abandoned that unlikely scenario and did not oppose his release...
...addition to taking individual cases, Scheck and Neufeld are lobbying for more systemic change. They want other states to adopt laws like New York's, creating a right to post-conviction DNA testing and requiring the state to pay if the inmate can't afford the $3,000 to $5,000 cost. They also want laws requiring prosecutors to keep DNA evidence at least as long as a defendant remains in jail. Now prosecutors are generally free to throw away biological evidence when they want...
...Innocence Project is operating in a shrinking field. The vast majority of its docket consists of old cases, prosecuted when DNA testing was still rare. Now that law enforcement is integrating DNA into its investigative procedures (see box), there should be fewer people convicted despite exonerating biological evidence. But the broader problem addressed by the project--that innocent people are going to jail--shows no sign of ending. Why is the criminal-justice system making so many mistakes...