June 8 OKLAHOMA: Bad Company for the Government Although I'm sure I will anger many people by approaching this subject, I feel compelled to do it anyway. Everyone knows that the United States government officials get their positions by seeing who can be the biggest idiot, jerk, moron, etc. But you would think they would require even just a little hint of intelligence. Or so I thought. That was until the 2nd trial of Terry Nichols began. How many witnesses testified about seeing a 'mysterious man' that nobody could say resembled Nichols in even the slightest way? How many claimed to have witnessed Timothy McVeigh (who was executed in 2001 for being the mastermind of the 1995 bombing in Oklahoma) with one or more men prior to the bombing? They even have a description and sketch of this group of men consisting of John Does number 2, 3, 4 and 5. So why is no one looking for them? It's obvious that the government had a hand in the bombing somewhere down the line; everything that happened just doesn't add up. McVeigh scouted out the Murrah building weeks before the bombing. But then he stopped at a gas station on April 19 to ask directions to the Murrah building. Witnesses claim to have seen that McVeigh was sporting a military-style haircut, yet he was wearing a hat that day. McVeigh used a fake I.D. to rent the Ryder truck. No, wait, he used his real I.D. There were reports of bombs found on the inside of the Murrah building. No, wait that was a lie. Judging by the evidence, if a bomb was on the outside of the building, science would claim that debris would blow in the opposite direction, causing the building to implode rather than explode. No, that's where the inside bomb story developed. It's all a vicious circle. As for Nichols himself, the man was nowhere near Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. He bought the ingredients for the bomb, helped mix them and then was never heard from again until after the explosion. Yet prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for a man who had virtually nothing to do with the actual explosion on April 19. Are they trying to hush up Nichols for something? The whole system is a joke. (source: Stephanie Smirlies; Useless-Knowledge.com) USA: Reagan's legal revolution lives through federal bench appointments In 1988, in a speech to the Federalist Society, a group of conservative and libertarian lawyers and law students, President Ronald Reagan recalled that he had promised to appoint federal judges "who didn't share the skepticism of our extreme liberal friends about the fundamentals that underpin our laws and our society. We would select judges who would reaffirm the core belief of our free land -- and we have." Reagan then reeled off the names of William Rehnquist, whom he had elevated to chief justice of the United States; Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia; "and of course Judge Robert Bork," whose nomination to the high court the year before had been defeated in the U.S. Senate. As Americans reflect on the legacy of the 40th president, who died Saturday after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease, many legal observers see Reagan's 358 appointments to the federal courts as one of his most enduring legacies. 306 of those appointees are still on the bench. David M. O'Brien, a Supreme Court expert at the University of Virginia, said that when it came to selecting judges, the Reagan administration was the "most ideologically coherent" administration in history. "They refused to nominate nominees promoted by moderate Republicans," O'Brien said, recalling that Reagan Attorney General Edwin Meese once told a lawyers' group that the president's judicial appointments would institutionalize the Reagan revolution regardless of what happened in future elections. "Reagan and his folks put in a systematic effort to reshape the federal judiciary in a very right-wing mold," said Eliott Mincberg, vice president and legal director of the liberal group People for the American Way. "I think they had an enormous amount of success." Mincberg said the administration sought candidates in their 30s and 40s to ensure that they would have a lasting effect on the law. Many legal observers say that is exactly what happened, especially on the Supreme Court, where the Reagan appointees -- joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, who was appointed by the first President Bush -- have upheld vouchers for student at parochial schools, lowered the wall separating church and state, limited the exposure of state governments to private lawsuits in federal court, curbed affirmative action and made it easier for condemned murderers to be executed. They also have preferred not to decide some questions. In general, said University of Pittsburgh law professor Arthur D. Hellman, "Reagan-appointed judges demonstrate skepticism about judicial intervention that you did not see generally in Jimmy Carter's appointees." Herman Schwartz, a law professor at American University and the author of "Right-Wing Justice: The Conservative Campaign to Take Over the Courts," uses stronger language. In an interview yesterday, he said Reagan and Meese used the judicial selection process to promote a "counterrevolution against the New Deal and the cultural changes of the 1950s." Yet on one issue dear to Reagan's heart, his appointments have not changed the law as he would have liked. In his 1988 Federalist Society speech, Reagan called for "an end to the fanciful readings of the Constitution that produce such decisions as Roe v. Wade." In a 1992 Pennsylvania case, two Reagan appointees -- O'Connor and Kennedy -- voted to reaffirm the basic constitutional right to an abortion announced in the 1973 Roe decision. The 1992 abortion decision proves that presidents cannot always predict how their appointees will vote. But O'Brien points out that O'Connor, whose vote was crucial in salvaging the right to abortion, was the exception that proved the rule when it came to Reagan's slate of judges. In the 1980 election Reagan promised to appoint a woman to the court, O'Brien noted, and he did, even though "there were very few conservative women judges available." O'Brien added that Kennedy, the other Reagan justice who voted to preserve a right to abortion, was not Reagan's first choice. "Bork would have filled that slot" and provided a 5th vote to repudiate Roe, he noted. Not everyone shares the view that Reagan judges are either cookie-cutter conservatives, as liberals charge, or principled adherents of the "original intent" of the framers of the Constitution, as the president who appointed them maintained. As early as 1987, an article in the Washington Post noted that some Reagan judges in their rulings had "ignored conservative causes, rejected the Republican platform, and repudiated the religious right." Part of the explanation, Hellman said, is that "even people who should know better think that people who agree with them on one issue will be on their side on every other issue." He cited the example of John Noonan, a law professor known for his anti-abortion views when Reagan appointed him to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals based in San Francisco. To the dismay of conservatives, Noonan, once on the bench, proved to be an eloquent critic of the way the death penalty was imposed. As for "original intent," H. Jefferson Powell, a constitutional historian at Duke University Law School, said: "I do not believe that any judges conform their constitutional decisions to original intent, original meaning, or original anything. They use originality arguments when helpful, and ignore them otherwise. We the American people have no judges who restrain themselves because of respect for democratic decision-making." (source: Pittsburg Post-Gazette) ******************** Church opposes abortion, death penalty -- but experts see difference Abortion and capital punishment are hot political potatoes which divide more than unite U.S. voters, but opposition to both is clear in Catholic teaching. A major difference between the 2 issues is that accepting the abortion teaching is more important for adherence to one's Catholic faith than following the teaching on capital punishment, said several theologians and experts in Catholic social thought interviewed by Catholic News Service. Another difference, outlined in the "Catechism of the Catholic Church," is that abortion is always wrong, while there may be circumstances -- although "very rare" in modern times -- when state-approved capital punishment is possible. "A Catholic who thinks that there is no moral problem with abortion fails to grasp the thrust of the church's teaching," said Jesuit Father John Langan, professor of Catholic social thought at Georgetown University's Institute of Ethics in Washington. Regarding capital punishment, "a Catholic can say that in certain circumstances prohibiting it doesn't apply," he said. In theological terms, the abortion teaching requires "assent of faith" while the teaching on capital punishment requires "religious respect of mind and will," said Father Russell Smith, official theologian for the Diocese of Richmond, Va., and past president of the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Boston. Canon law also calls for the excommunication of "a person who procures a completed abortion" while there is no legal penalty for people involved in state-sanctioned capital punishment. Interest in church teachings about abortion and capital punishment has risen recently because of the wide debate as to whether bishops should deny Communion to Catholic politicians who support legalized abortion or hold public policy positions that conflict with fundamental moral teachings of the church. In U.S. politics in general, abortion and capital punishment are often litmus tests. Some people may tend to oppose legal abortion while others may tend to oppose capital punishment -- and sometimes there's little crossover. Catholic teaching sees a common theological base for opposing both. The catechism discusses abortion and capital punishment as part of the church's adherence to the Fifth Commandment, "Thou shalt not kill." Regarding abortion, the catechism says that "human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception" and that "this teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable." Regarding capital punishment, it says that in today's world "the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity 'are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.'" The quote within the quote is from Pope John Paul II's 1995 encyclical, "The Gospel of Life." Both teachings originated early in church history, with opposition to capital punishment growing stronger in the 1990s under the current pope, said Dominican Father Kevin O'Rourke, bioethics professor at Loyola University in Chicago. "Pope John Paul II has developed it more firmly to where it is almost never justified," he said. Father Smith said the historical issue has been, where does one draw the line in terms of when capital punishment is permitted? "The line moves and the latitude can widen, but the Holy Father doesn't see it widening in these days," he said. Father Smith said that opposition to capital punishment is also tied to the church's concept of mercy. St. Augustine, a bishop and theologian born in the fourth century, said that a bishop's duty was to plead for mercy for people sentenced to death, said Father Smith. "There is always a strong rudder in the church steering toward mercy," he added. The church's evolution toward restricting capital punishment also has sociological roots in the tremendous human carnage Europe has seen starting with the 18th-century French Revolution, Father Smith said. He cited the Russian Revolution, World War I, Nazi Germany and World War II. "This cheapening of human life helped in moving the church toward the abolition of capital punishment to restore respect for human life and dignity," Father Smith said. Father Langan added that part of the evolution includes strong papal pressure for Catholics to be consistent and defend life on both abortion and capital punishment issues. "The pope's position is that if you are defending life in one area, you should defend it in all," he said. Father O'Rourke said that, although abortion has always been morally condemned, there has been evolution -- based on advances in scientific knowledge -- regarding at what moment a human being is formed. Advances in genetics starting in the 19th century make it clear now that a human being is established with the fusion of the egg and sperm because the entire human genetic material is present at that moment, Father O'Rourke said. Before, based on their knowledge of biology, many theologians, including St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century, thought that a human being was not formed until several weeks after impregnation, said Father O'Rourke. Father Smith added, though, that since the early writings of the church there always has been a moral rejection of deliberate expulsion from the womb even if it took place before the moment when theologians thought a human being had been formed. (source: Catholic News Service) GEORGIA: Millionaire faces trial in murder of socialite wife----Ex-fugitive lived in luxury while eluding police around the globe Carrying a box filled with a dozen long-stemmed pink roses, a man knocked on the door of Lita McClinton Sullivan's townhouse. He fired 2 shots, and the socialite dropped dead. Now, after 17 years and a round-the-world manhunt for one of America's most-wanted fugitives, her millionaire husband has been brought back to Atlanta from Thailand to face charges he had his estranged wife killed. James Vincent Sullivan, 63, sits in a jail cell, awaiting trial early next year. He could get the death penalty. "It's time for justice to be served," said Lita Sullivan's father, Emory McClinton. "But we are still missing a family member. That should never have happened. She should not have predeceased her parents." Police say Sullivan had every reason to kill his 35-year-old wife: greed, affairs and status. She was killed Jan. 16, 1987, hours before a hearing in her bitterly contested divorce. She was seeking the $450,000 townhouse, its antique French furnishings and $100,000 in jewelry. Sullivan lived in luxury as he eluded authorities on a cross-continent run -- from Palm Beach, Fla., to Costa Rica to Panama to Venezuela, and then to a beach condo in Thailand, where he was captured in 2002 after someone recognized him from America's Most Wanted. After 19 months in an overcrowded Thailand prison, a worn-looking Sullivan was extradited to Atlanta in March, wearing shackles and walking with one bare foot swollen from an infection. The Sullivans' troubles started in 1983 in Palm Beach, where James Sullivan bought an oceanfront mansion for $2 million after selling his inherited Georgia liquor company for $5 million. Newly rich, he wanted to break into the Palm Beach elite. But some say he may have been held back by his blue-collar background, his Boston accent and his black wife, Lita. "It's the law of the jungle. A dark woman at that point in time just couldn't walk around as casually as a white one," said James Jennings Sheeran, author of Palm Beach Power & Glory, Wit & Wisdom. "She may well have held him back." Later, the Sullivans moved to Atlanta, where the social structure was not so rigid. He started seeing other women, and his wife eventually filed for divorce. After her slaying, James Sullivan again took up residence in Palm Beach and was frequently seen around town. "The attitude was in the beginning, 'No, he wouldn't do it because he's one of us,' " said Franklyn P. deMarco Jr., owner of Ta-boo Restaurant in Palm Beach. "It seems so absurd that someone would plan to have his wife killed just before the divorce, when anyone who's ever read a dime-store novel knows police are going to look for who benefits." Sullivan's attorney, Don Samuel, has said there is not much direct evidence linking his client to the shooting. The day Lita Sullivan was killed, James Sullivan had a champagne-and-caviar dinner in Palm Beach with Hyo-Sook Choi Rogers, whom he married 8 months later. One lead came from a Texas woman who came forward in 1998 to say she recognized Sullivan as the man who paid $25,000 to her former boyfriend, a long-distance trucker named Phillip Anthony Harwood. Prosecutors say that money paid for the hit. Harwood pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and received a 20-year prison sentence in exchange for his testimony against Sullivan. Harwood is accused of being 1 of the 3 men in the hit team, but he denies pulling the trigger. Sullivan was brought to trial in 1992 in federal court, where prosecutors argued he violated interstate commerce laws by arranging his wife's killing over the phone. But a judge dismissed the case after Sullivan's attorney argued there was no evidence of who made the calls or what was discussed. "He was tried once, and the court found so little evidence it didn't go to a jury," Sullivan's lawyer said. "To say someone has a motive and therefore he must be the guilty person, that's a hard way to judge guilt." Sullivan also faces a $4 million civil judgment after a Florida jury found him liable in 1994 in a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by his dead wife's family. None of that money has been collected. "He's done everything he can do to hide his money," said Brad Moores, an attorney for the McClintons. "It's a very fascinating story. I've worked on this case now going back 13 or 14 years, and I'm not sure what to expect next." (source: Associated Press) CALIFORNIA: Death row linked to murder case A convicted murderer and former member of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang Monday said he passed along a jailhouse note that asked Brian Seabourn to kill Kenny Stewart many years ago. And a death-row inmate told a Stanislaus County Superior Court judge that he watched Seabourn apologize to Dennis Lawley for framing him while they all were on the exercise yard at San Quentin State Prison. Both men -- who were handcuffed, shackled and heavily guarded during their court appearances -- said Lawley of Modesto, who is on death row, had nothing to do with Stewart's murder on Jan. 22, 1989. The two witnesses were the latest to testify in a series of post-conviction hearings ordered by the California Supreme Court. And there were some inconsistencies in their stories. Wayne "Smiley" Richardson, who dropped out of the Aryan Brotherhood in 1994, said he passed a jailhouse note from gang leader James MacDonald to Seabourn 17 years ago at Folsom State Prison. Richardson said the note arrived under his cell door one day. He said he read it, flushed it down a toilet, then relayed its contents to Seabourn, who was about to be released on parole. He said the note asked Seabourn to kill Stewart, because Stewart sold drugs in prison without paying the 1/3 tribute, or tax, that the gang required of white inmates. Richardson could not remember the message exactly, but said the gist of it was this: "If you get the opportunity and you're out there, take care of business." Richardson previously told a different story Richardson, who is serving 2 life sentences for 2 separate killings, said the gang ruled through fear and intimidation and couldn't afford to let Stewart off the hook. He noted that other gangs controlled minority inmates. And Richardson acknowledged that he told Deputy Attorney General Michael Farrell a different story during an prison interview. At that time, Richardson said he never read the note, because it was sealed. "I gave you a half truth," said Richardson, who is also cooperating with the FBI in a murder case against an inmate accused of killing for the gang. Richardson was called to the witness stand by Scott Kauffman, an attorney with the California Appellate Project. He is trying to prove that Lawley has been wrongly convicted of hiring Seabourn to kill Stewart. The California Supreme Court affirmed Lawley's conviction in January 2002, but in February 2003 asked the trial court to hold hearings to determine if Lawley may be innocent. Lawley, a paranoid schizophrenic, represented himself in the murder-for-hire case and told the court his goal was to emulate the Beast in Revelations. He had previously been found incompetent to stand trial for pointing a shotgun at a deputy sheriff in Sonora. He was confined to Atascadero State Hospital for 4 years. Judge John E. Griffin is acting as the eyes and ears for the high court and must make recommendations when the hearings are over. During 2 days of testimony in March, Seabourn said he had no help from either Lawley or Stephen Mendonca, who pleaded guilty to participating in the shooting and was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. Before Richardson testified, the court heard from convicted murderer Lee Barnet, who befriended Seabourn in prison. Barnet said high-ranking gang members were worried that Lawley could make trouble when he arrived on death row in spring 1990. He said gang leaders told Seabourn to make amends with Lawley, or kill him. Seabourn asked Barnet to back him up and they went out to the yard together to confront Lawley. Lawley greeted Seabourn like a friend. There was no fight. "I couldn't believe how forgiving Lawley was about it," Barnet said. (source: The Modesto Bee) *********************** Public defenders protest potential cuts Looming budget cuts are threatening already squeezed public defenders' offices in San Diego County, bringing a sharp increase in attorneys' case loads and, public defenders said, putting the legal rights of the accused at risk. That was the message Monday as a few dozen deputy public defenders, department staffers and some of their supporters picketed in front of the courthouse in downtown San Diego. The county public defender's office faces the loss of 72 employees next month if the San Diego County Board of Supervisors approves a proposed budget plan. The proposal would cut about $2 million from the public defender's office and the alternate public defender's office, which also takes some public defense cases. Many of those not losing their jobs outright are taking pay cuts, protesters said. The cuts mean the attorneys will have less time to spend on individual cases ---- and that could mean the accused run the risk of not getting a fair shake in court, protestors said. "We see a serious challenge to the quality of defense in this county," said Deputy Public Defender Joseph Kownacki, supervisor of the office's felony team. The offices of the public defender and the alternate public defender handle defense for 90 % of the cases filed by the district attorney's office, he said. According to the county's budget, the public defender's office will lose about $1.13 million, or 2.6 % of its funding, if the proposed budget passes. The alternate public defender's office stands to lose about $734,000, or 5.6 % of its funding. The proposed budget for the 2004-2005 year, which begins next month, is about $55 million for the offices of the public defender and the alternate public defender. The proposed budget for the office of the district attorney, which prosecutes cases, is $106.8 million for the same year, an 8.7 % increase over this year. The public defender's office has not been able to hire any new attorneys in at least 2 years. When staffers have left, Kownacki said, their positions have been left vacant. The budget cuts mean a sharply increased case load will hit an office already bogged down by more cases than the national standard set by the American Bar Association, Kownacki said. Public defender Marian Modrak said the heavier case load means less time with each client. "We are devastated," she said. "The less time I have to spend with my clients, the worse it is for my clients." Protestors said the picket and rally were designed to send a message to the Board of Supervisors. "We have to let them know they are hurting us," attorney Marsha Duggin said. "We are not able to do our job." Also on hand for the protest was former criminal defendant Dale Akiki, whose very high-profile case in the early 1990s ---- the longest criminal trial in San Diego history ---- was fought and won by 2 women from the public defender's office. "If it was not for them, I wouldn't be standing here today," Akiki said. "I owe my life to them." Public Defender Steven Carroll said in a recent interview that clients can sue for failure to provide effective counsel, or that the courts may say they simply won't give more cases to the public defender's office. The potential losses include 29 jobs that already are vacant, 25 attorney positions and a number of administrators. "This is going to test us," Carroll said. Larry Beyersdorf, supervisor of the public defender's North County office, said recently that his office will lose 3 attorneys, dropping from 35 to 32, under the proposed cuts. At some point, the cuts in staff affect the quality of the representation the public defender's office can provide, Beyersdorf said. North County has 12 pending murder cases, including 3 potential death- penalty cases, which are more time-consuming for the attorneys, Beyersdorf said. (source: North County Times) MASSACHUSETTS: Foolproof forensics?----Even science may not make a death sentence infallible In proposing a new death penalty for Massachusetts last month, Governor Mitt Romney offered firm assurance that no innocent people would be executed: Convictions, he said, will be based on science. According to the proposal, a death-penalty verdict would require not only an especially heinous crime, but also "conclusive scientific evidence" of guilt. If it passed, Massachusetts would become the 1st state to require a scientific link to a crime to impose a death sentence. Romney's plan, however, comes at a difficult time for courtroom science. Much scientific evidence is coming under fresh attack from lawyers and judges, either for technical unreliability or for the human errors that can color the results. Even fingerprint analysis - once the gold standard of scientific evidence - is being questioned. Last month, an Oregon lawyer was released from custody after the FBI acknowledged he was wrongly linked to the Madrid terrorist train bombings through poor fingerprint analysis. "The premise is interesting that scientific evidence is more reliable than other evidence. . . . It would be nice if it were true," said Simon A. Cole, an assistant professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California at Irvine. "In the cases of wrongful conviction that we know about, scientific evidence is a very significant factor." Romney's plan, which would be applied only to particular first-degree murders such as killing a police officer or murders involving torture, does not require absolute scienti fic proof. Rather, it would require a jury to find evidence "reaching a high level of scientific certainty" that will "strongly corroborate the defendant's guilt." While DNA is the most ironclad evidence now available, other categories such as photographs, video and audiotapes, fingerprints and tool marks may suffice. Multiple layers of review in the plan would ensure "as much as humanly possible" no innocent person be sentenced to death. "We can't get to zero, but we can get close," said Joseph Hoffmann, a law professor at Indiana University who cochaired the panel that crafted the Romney plan. Only a minority of murder cases have enough biological evidence to provide DNA, according to defense lawyers and crime experts. This means that the burden of proof could more often fall on far more subjective and much more controversial evidence, such as tire tracks or fingerprints. Though often presented as science by prosecutors and expert witnesses, such evidence is increasingly derided by defense lawyers and academics as an interpretive art. "[Technicians] are actually told to develop this intuitive sense of certainty when they review fingerprint comparisons that they've obtained a match," said David Faigman, a University of California law professor who wrote "Laboratory of Justice: The Supreme Court's 200-year Struggle to Integrate Science And The Law." He said there are no required standards for fingerprint analysis, and labs often declare a match between 2 prints based on years of examining fingerprints rather than a clearly spelled-out methodology. "From a scientific standpoint," he said, "that is the voodoo part." Faigman and other critics argue that science has a long and checkered history in the courtroom. Lawyers once used body characteristics, such the lengths of people's arms or shape of their heads, to prove a defendant's propensity to commit a crime. In 1927, a phrenologist was called into court to "read" a woman accused of murdering her husband; the phrenologist declared that the suspect's chin "tapered like the lower face of a cat," demonstrating treachery." As phrenology was being dismissed as quackery, the early 20th century saw the birth of forensic science as a specialized profession, with laboratories and experts who aimed to link suspects definitively to crime scenes. Eventually, handwriting, fingerprints, photographs and blood samples became regularly introduced into evidence, and the belief that "every criminal leaves a trace" became a cornerstone of police investigations. By the late 1980s, DNA testing had been widely adopted, and today technology is still marching on: A new technique called "brain fingerprinting," a kind of lie detector based on brain signals, was admitted into court in Iowa in 2003 in order to help free a man in prison for murdering a retired police officer. (The man was freed by the Iowa Supreme Court, although the judges did not refer to the technology in their decision.) If history is any lesson, however, today's certainty is tomorrow's question mark. For example, the rise of DNA testing has revealed enormous failings in the microscopic hair analysis that was considered reliable a generation ago. In 2002, DNA analysis helped free aMontana man who had spent 15 years in prison for rape based in large part on faulty expert analysis of pubic hair found at the crime scene. According to the Innocence Project, which works to free wrongfully convicted people, in 25 of the first 82 DNA exonerations around the country, scientists and prosecutors presented bad or tainted science to convict a defendant. So concerned was the US Supreme Court about the growing role of science in the courtroom in the 1990s that the court instructed judges to act as gatekeepers for scientific evidence, scrutinizing experts and procedures to be sure scientific techniques were peer-reviewed or tested, with known and acceptable error rates. That instruction led to the 1st major court decision questioning fingerprint evidence. 2 years ago, a Philadelphia judge ruled an expert could not link fingerprints found at a crime scene to a defendant because the matching technique used by fingerprint experts had never been proven valid. There was no proof, the judge said, that fingerprint analysis had been scientifically tested or its error rates calculated. The judge later reversed his decision after the FBI testified about training, procedure and error rates, but the challenge opened up the floodgates for other defense attorneys protesting fingerprint analysis. "It has never been demonstrated that fingerprint examiners use a proven methodology," said Lyn Haber, a California forensic researcher. With DNA analysis, the problem is different. The scientific underpinnings of DNA analysis are welltested and conceded to be solid even by critics. But the certainty of a DNA match can be overshadowed by the larger question of how the DNA evidence was obtained and handled. In the O.J. Simpson murder case, for instance, defense attorneys cast doubt on DNA results because of sloppy lab work, ultimately suggesting investigators planted the evidence at the scene. And a DNA match to a crime scene, many defense attorneys point out, only proves a suspect was there - not that he or she committed a crime. "The problems with DNA are partly human error, or worse, human corruption," said Harvey Silverglate, a Boston civil-rights attorney who fears innocent people may still be convicted under the Romney plan. Human error is also emerging as a key problem in crime labs, both in Massachusetts and around the country. Stephan Cowans, who was convicted in 1998 of shooting a police officer in a Roxbury backyard, was freed from prison this year after it was revealed the fingerprint evidence used to convict him did not come from his finger. A recent article in Champion, a magazine published by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, noted widespread problems at crime labs across the country, many exacerbated by overwork and small budgets. In Massachusetts, a state report two years ago noted that space in the State Police crime lab in Sudbury was so limited that scientists had to extract evidence from suspect and victim's clothing on alternate days to avoid cross-contamination. Stung by that report, officials say the state has since gone through a voluntary accreditation by a national board that sets standards for crime labs. But that is only partially true: The Sudbury lab is accredited only in DNA testing and "criminalistics," the analysis of trace evidence, fibers and tool markings. The offices of ballistics and fingerprint analysis are not accreditated; nor is the state's DNA database. State officials say they are attempting to get them accredited and are also seeking a large increase in funds for that lab. Under the death penalty plan, Romney has pledged to ensure that all labs are operating as flawlessly as possible so there will be no questions about the way evidence is collected or analyzed. If valid questions do arise, prosecutors would not seek the death penalty. Death penalty opponents agree that if labs were better monitored and funded fully, there would be less suspicion about whether the evidence was tainted or analyzed incorrectly. And the authors of the Massachusetts death penalty proposal are clear in wanting an independent scientific review of the collection, analysis and presentation of evidence, along with other safeguards. But as long as humans are involved in science, either analyzing it or interpreting it, mistakes can happen, others say. "What we say in forensic science is the more certain the scientist is, the less reliable the scientist is," said James Starrs, a professor of law and forensic sciences at George Washington University. 'We all want to be on safe ground, always looking for a magic bullet. But our society can easily be taken in by science, and that is worrisome.: (source: The Boston Globe)
