Say Anything Blog

Dallas County Records 12th DNA Case was one of the featured articles in the Dallas Morning News yesterday.  Actually there have been many convictions overturn by the results of DNA testing since it became available for criminal case analysis.  Of course there has been the usual breast beating by state representatives

‘These are appalling mistakes, and in the case of Dallas County, there have been so many,’ said Democratic state Sen. Rodney Ellis of Houston, who is sponsoring a bill to create Texas Innocence Commission to scrutinize the state’s criminal justice system. Ellis serves as chairman of the board of directors for the Innocence Project.

This will probably result in another level of bureaucracy which will do nothing but spend more of our tax money.

The obvious questions that are brought to my mind is how are apparently innocent people being convicted in the face of what is now negating DNA evidence, and just how accurate is the overturning DNA evidence.  On conviction side is the strong possiblity of misidentifications, falsified evidence and plea bargaining.  The first 2 of my list are evident in the Duke lacrosse player rape case where a highly tainted line-up was used to identify the alleged perpetrators and the alleged victim apparently falsified her statements.  I suspect that the pressure of plea bargaining sometimes convinces innocent suspects to accept a lessor sentence rather than risk a more severe penalty if they lose in a court case.

On the DNA side, I confess to mostly ignorance on the quality of the test results.  However, it seems to me that tests on DNA material which is several years old would be problematic at best. Some of you readers/commentors may be able to discuss the veracity of these tests.

Considering how easy it must be to be falsely charged with a sex crime, I am grateful that DNA tests are available to potentially disprove the accusation.