Word: schecks
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What you failed to mention about Barry Scheck [NATION, Sept. 13] is that this is the same Barry Scheck who convincingly argued in the O.J. Simpson trial that DNA samples can be contaminated and made useless (or at least open to "reasonable doubt") as scientific evidence in a criminal trial. Through his own arguments, we are left with two possible conclusions: either Scheck is freeing potentially guilty people through the Innocence Project, or he successfully defended a double murderer he knew to be guilty. I don't know whether to laud this man or deplore him. JEFFREY M. LLEWELLYN Denver...
...Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, through their Innocence Project, are working to free the wrongly imprisoned, and I am disturbed that "even many prosecutors" concede that this is an important function. Are the other prosecutors more interested in convictions than in justice...
...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...
...Scheck and Neufeld also want more laws allowing the wrongly imprisoned to sue for damages. Only half a dozen states currently have such statutes, and some have low caps--like California's $10,000 maximum. If Dennis Fritz had slipped and fallen in a government building, he could have sued for millions. After being incarcerated for 12 years for a crime he didn't commit, he can't sue for anything...
...Still, Scheck says one of the most important lessons from the Innocence Project's work is that the system does get it wrong, and more often than people think. One person who doesn't need to be convinced is Dennis Fritz. Now that he's free, he's planning to go to law school--and to start a new career as a defense attorney...