April 8 USA: DNA Frees Death-Row Inmates, Brings Others to Justice After 5 years on Louisiana's death row, Ryan Matthews received a second chance at life. He was exonerated last year with the help of DNA evidence. "He was 17 years old at the time of his arrest and is borderline retarded," said Martha Kashickey, the public-education associate for the Innocence Project at Yeshiva University's law school in New York City. "Post-conviction DNA testing on the mask the perpetrator left at the scene both exonerated Matthews and revealed the identity of the actual perpetrator," Kashickey said from New York City. The Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) reports that 13 other death-row inmates have also been exonerated with the help of DNA evidence. "The assumption was that they were guilty [because] they were found guilty, unanimously, by a jury," said Richard Dieter, president of the DPIC. "But sometimes DNA kind of pierces through that and says that, despite what a witness says he saw, this person was not the one who left this evidence at the scene." While many death-row inmates await only their execution, others hope for new tests that could spur their release. "People are on death row sometimes as long as 15 or 20 years, so there are still quite a few people who were convicted at times when DNA testing wasn't prevalent [or as reliable as it is now]," Dieter said. In 2004 the U.S. Congress passed legislation that encourages all states to enable post-trial DNA tests. The legislation also provides funding for such tests. "Half of the [U.S.] states have processes to allow [DNA] testing" even after the appeals process is exhausted, Dieter explained. Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) spokesperson Tela Mange notes that her agency's crime lab has handled 49 such inmate requests (not all of them death-penalty cases) for DNA retesting. A significant percentage of the inmates have been exonerated. "Eight tests were inconclusive, and there were 9 individuals that were excluded as donors of the biological evidence left at the scene," Mange said from her Austin office. Increasingly Turning to Genetic Evidence Such post-trial exonerations are likely to become a thing of the past, because modern, accurate, affordable DNA testing has become a common pretrial practice. "We have an increasing number of between 2,500-3,000 DNA cases each year," Mange said. "Juries are coming to expect it, especially because they are being trained by TV. But there is a disconnect between CSI and the things that we can do, and that's a concern. We can't get returns on DNA cases in an hour." DNA evidence is also subject to human error. Confidence in many testing labs has been shaken by confirmed cases of botched, falsified, and otherwise erroneous procedures, most infamously at the Houston Police Department crime laboratory, where a 17-year-old boy was convicted for rape based on improperly processed DNA samples. While exonerations of death-row inmates and violent criminals are usually subject to very stringent testing control, such has not always been the case with pre-trial DNA evidence. "Just because you're doing DNA testing, people shouldn't always consider the results 100 percent reliable," Dieter explained. "Much depends on the quality of people collecting the evidence, doing the testing, doing the probability calculations - all of this is subject to human error." Reform Needed? Rob Warden, director of the Center on Wrongful Conviction at the Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago, said the United States' many labs and controlling agencies are in need of fundamental reform. "The most fundamental reform would be to establish reliable scientific procedures in crime labs," he said. "They should be independent of law-enforcement agencies. Scientists should not know what the desired outcome of the test is. Instead, it sometimes happens [that officials say,] 'Here's a semen sample from the victim, and here's the suspect's sample - can you match them?' That shouldn't be the question." Even when DNA evidence is accurately managed, using it to prove innocence or guilt is not always straightforward. "People confuse the presence of biological material and DNA with its ultimate use," said John Bradley, the district attorney of Williamson County, Texas. "DNA means that a biological material is present, but there is still a lot of work to be done to draw truthful inferences from it, from the prosecutors' or defendants' viewpoint. You can go into any room anywhere and likely find some DNA, but it doesn't resolve the question of what does that DNA mean?" Bradley explained that not only are juries becoming more DNA savvy but defendants are as well. "In a few interesting cases defendants have come close to manipulating DNA in ways that led the case away from themselves," he explained. A Saskatchewan, Canada, doctor was accused of raping a sedated patient 1992 but readily consented to DNA blood tests, which indicated that he was not the rapist. Only after the victim hired a private detective did the truth emerge. The physician had twice implanted into his arm plastic tubes of another person's blood. He was eventually convicted in 1999 and served about four years in prison. "It really opened my eyes," Bradley said. "As much as we can make mistakes as prosecutors, we have to be aware that defendants can also manipulate the system." Bradley cites other complex examples of intentional DNA manipulation. For instance, a serial rapist paid prostitutes for semen-filled condoms and used the fluid to confound DNA testing. Also, several Texas prisoners switched identity armbands prior to blood sampling, fooling a nurse who did not know the inmates. Despite the challenges, DNA is helping law enforcement to close the books on many cases that had been unresolved for years. The United States' Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) compares DNA profiles of convicted sex offenders and other violent criminals with evidence from unsolved cases. "We had a serial rapist who raped two little girls, and the detectives had decided that there was no way to solve the case," Mange, the Texas Department of Public Safety spokesperson, said. "But five years later we submitted the evidence [to CODIS], and we got a match. We never would have solved this case in a million years without CODIS, and these girls were living in fear, because they thought that this person was out there." The booming use of DNA testing has led to enormous backlogs in many labs, and lack of public funding for the tests has frustrated prosecutors and defenders alike. With DNA's importance likely to grow, both groups hope that increased funding will help the wheels of justice turn fairly and quickly. (source: National Geographic News) *************************** It's high time to kill the death penalty As we mourn Pope John Paul II's passing, it is important for us to reflect upon "the culture of life" that embodied his papacy. An important part of that culture of life included unwavering opposition to capital punishment. For example, in a homily given at the Papal Mass in St. Pope John Paul II reflected an increasing sentiment around the world that life is sacred and that governments should not have the power to end life, that even people who have done terrible things have value. More than half the world has now abolished the death penalty, with only a few nations -- China, Iran and the United States among them -- that kill their own citizens. Thus, we ally ourselves with some of the world's worst human rights abusers when we kill in the name of justice. There are good reasons for the worldwide trend toward abolition of the death penalty. Evidence mounts that we repeatedly execute innocent people. Carefully constructed scientific studies fail to show that the death penalty deters violent crime. Indeed, some studies suggest that its brutalization effect may actually serve to increase homicides. Study after study shows that race is the strongest factor in determining who lives and who dies. It is no wonder that the majority of all executions occur in former slaveholding states. Moreover, it costs far more to execute someone than it does to imprison them for life. No good empirical grounds for supporting the death penalty remain. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints rejects a religious basis for the death penalty and "regards the question of whether and in what circumstances the state should impose capital punishment as a matter to be decide solely by the prescribed processes of civil law. We neither promote nor oppose capital punishment." Given that religious authorities do not require the death penalty, and given the lack of secular reasons for it, we are morally compelled to reassess. Even those few who seek only an "eye for an eye" must hesitate at a system that repeatedly strikes the wrong eye. Failure as a society to reconsider the propriety of the ultimate sanction would be a failure to seriously consider the moral implications of our collective responsibility to seek a more humane world. On March 1 the Supreme Court ended our isolation on the issue of the juvenile death penalty. Now, in the entire world, only Somalia, which has no functioning central government, claims the right to execute children. It is both amazing and reprehensible that a nation that regards itself as a shining example of human rights should be next to last on so important a human rights issue. That we have not begun serious discussion of capital punishment's broader moral deficiency is itself a moral failing. And it is a moral failing -- one that lessens us as a people. In a democracy, it is we who are responsible, who must ultimately be held to account, who are coarsened and diminished by our common moral bankruptcy. Winston Churchill wrote, "The mood and temper of the public with regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilization of any country." Similarly, our treatment of those who murder tells us a great deal about ourselves. It is time to consider whether we are serious about building a culture of life, one that respects even the worst of us and renounces killing as an instrument of state power -- not only because we are concerned about all people, including human beings who happen to have done bad things, but because we are concerned about our own moral health. It is time to end the death penalty. (source: Alan Clarke is an associate professor of integrated studies at Utah Valley State College. Laurelyn Whitt is a professor of philosophy and integrated studies at Utah Valley State College; Daily Herald) WYOMING: Prosecutor seeks death penalty for Riverton man charged with killing infant Prosecutors filed court papers seeking the death penalty against a Riverton man charged with killing his 22-month-old daughter. The documents filed Tuesday by Fremont County Attorney Ed Newell said Andrew J. Yellowbear should face the death penalty because: --the alleged murder was "especially atrocious or cruel, being unnecessarily torturous to the victim;" --the victim was under age 17; --the victim was "especially vulnerable due to physical disability;" --and Yellowbear was "likely to commit continued acts of physical violence." Yellowbear pleaded innocent last week to a charge of first-degree murder in the death of 22-month-old Marcella Hope Yellowbear. She was found dead July 2 in a bedroom closet with a broken arm, a fractured skull and bruises and burns over much of her body. Macalia's mother, Macalia Marcine Blackburn, initially was charged along with Yellowbear, but has agreed to testify against Yellowbear and plead guilty to a lesser charge of being an accessory to second-degree murder. Blackburn and Yellowbear have blamed each other for abusing the child; both remain in jail. (source: Associated Press) NEW YORK: Putting death penalty on Death Row Talk about a mercy killing: Albany is finally on the verge of putting the death penalty out of its misery. It was last summer that the state's highest court, the Court of Appeals, pulled the plug on capital punishment in New York. Since then, the death law has lingered in a persistent vegetative state, not officially dead yet, but pretty darn close. Come this Tuesday, the Codes Committee of the Assembly is set to pass the legislative equivalent of a DNR, a do-not-resuscitate order - effectively deep-sixing one of the most pointless and most expensive laws in the history of crime fighting in New York. Who says Albany never learns from its mistakes? "So much has changed in 10 years," David Kaczynski was saying from the capital yesterday. "In 1995, we didn't have all this experience with DNA. We didn't have the questions about innocent people being killed. 10 years ago, crime was such a bigger emotional issue." Kaczynski runs a small but smart lobbying group called New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty. He was opposed to the state killing people when that was a lonely position and his cause seemed hopeless. He's just as opposed today, as he stands at the edge of an extraordinary victory. He can give you a thousand reasons - practical, moral, financial, political and personal - why capital punishment is a dreadful idea for a place like New York. Or anywhere, actually. "Support for the death penalty has cooled significantly," he said, and the polls do seem to back him up. Remarkably, a Siena College survey last month found that only 29 % of New Yorkers support death for 1st-degree murderers. 56 % said life in prison without parole is a more fitting punishment. Asked straight up if the death penalty has a place in New York law, 42 % said yes, 46 said no. Voter backlash? What voter backlash? "People are learning that when you try to play God, it is hard to get it right," Kaczynski said. "Hard to make sure you have the right person every time. At the same time, we now have what was unavailable prior to 1995 - a sentence of life without parole. We have a fallback position to the death penalty. We can protect ourselves without shedding blood, without risking the death of an innocent person. All of that put together has affected public opinion and that has changed the politics." It would be naive, I suppose, to say that some moral argument has changed the hearts and minds of New York legislators. If history is any guide, that's an awful lot to expect from the people we send to Albany. It may just be that some assemblymen who once pandered to the public's death wishes are now reversing course, pandering to the public's pleas for restraint. Or maybe it was the death of an eloquently anti-death-penalty pope. Whatever! What a difference 10 years can make! If you doubt this, remember what happened to Mario Cuomo. A principled death-penalty opponent who vetoed every capital-punishment bill that crossed his desk, Cuomo paid the ultimate electoral price in 1994. After a campaign all about death, he was beaten by the pro-death Gov. George Pataki, who promptly gave crime-weary New Yorkers the death penalty they seemed so much to crave. Of course, no one was ever killed under that law, even though seven people were sentenced to die. The state's last execution was in 1963, under an earlier death penalty that was also found unconstitutional. And here's a depressing tabulation for a state with budget woes: We've now spent $200 million for 10 years worth of a death penalty that didn't kill anyone. Trial and appeal costs. Death-row construction and staffing. Prosecutor training and expert witnesses. Can't anyone think of better ways of fighting crime? More cops on the street? More drug-treatment slots? Job training, anti-gang programs or remedial reading classes? Irony alert: Cuomo's son, Andrew, the former federal housing secretary, is among the stronger voices working to keep the death bill in the ground where it belongs. And Pataki, nearing the end of his third term, doesn't seem to have the clout left to resurrect the death penalty. This could all be settled by next week. Joseph Lentol, the Brooklyn assemblyman who chairs the Codes Committee, says the death penalty just doesn't have the votes anymore. Lentol himself has gone from pro- to anti-death. And David Kaczynski is waiting anxiously through the weekend for the proper burial. "We know the results now," he said. "We've had this death penalty that sentenced 7 people and didn't kill anyone. Nobody in Albany is gonna get punished for being against the death penalty now." (source: Newsday) ILLINOIS: 'Dead Wrong' probes innocent man's fight for life, freedom When Darby Tillis knocked on the door of National Pastime Theater, he was looking for a one-night rental space in which to perform a solo show he'd been developing. Instead, after some discussion, he found a theater company willing to add his show to its season. Tillis has the distinction of being one of the 1st exonerated death row inmates. He was sentenced to death in 1979 for a double murder at a hot dog stand in the Uptown neighborhood. Fingered by the real killer's girlfriend, who set him up to protect her boyfriend, Tillis went through five trials before he was freed in 1987 with the help of new evidence and petitions brought by Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions and the MacArthur Justice Center. "I was really amazed by his story," said company member Laurence Bryan. "I thought it deserved to be developed and performed in a longer run." Tillis' one-man show, Dead Wrong, focuses on an examination of the death penalty throughout the country, in hopes of getting the public involved in the fight to abolish it altogether. Woven throughout the piece are blues songs written and sung by Tillis; Davy DeLaFuente provides guitar accompaniment. "What we have done is put together a linear account of what life was like for Darby in prison and what it is like for him now," said Bryan, who directs the show. "Dead Wrong" opens tonight and continues through May 15 at National Pastime Theater, 4139 N. Broadway. Tickets: (773) 327-7077. (source : Chicago Sun-Times)
