US Supreme Court: No Constitutional Right To DNA Evidence Post Conviction

Image via Wikipedia

The US Supreme Court published its ruling in a case from Alaska entitled District Attorneys Office For Third Judicial District vs. Osborne which holds that where a defendant has access to DNA evidence prior to trial that the States denial of post-trial reevaluation of the evidence is not a violation of the defendants constitutional rights.

Instead of embracing the latest technology and the opportunity to correct what may be tens of thousands of wrongful convictions, the Supreme Court has chosen to defend the conviction itself despite the fact the defendant may be innocent.

Remarkably, the Supreme Court stated that "Osborne has already been found guilty and therefore has only a limited liberty interest in postconviction relief."

The Court went on to state "The availability of new DNA testing technologies, however, cannot mean that every criminal conviction, or even every criminal conviction involving biological evidence is suddenly in doubt. The task of establishing rules to harness DNA's power to prove innocence without unnecessarily overthrowing the established criminal justice system belongs primarily to the legislature."

This means that even if you are innocent of a crime and DNA exists which may exonerate you there is no right, if you have already been convicted of the crime, to have the DNA reevaluated without first proving your "actual innocence". This is an absurd standard which prevents the release of anyone who cannot prove innocence without the DNA evidence.

The Supreme Court shows decidedly more interest in upholding State convictions regardless of whether they are wrongful.

The Court has lost its way. The idea is to ensure that wrongful convictions do not occur and that when they do occur that there is a remedy available to correct the error. Here, they deny the ability to correct what may be a wrongful conviction by citing the need to maintain the status quo of the conviction, that the conviction itself is more important than the innocence of the defendant.

This is a bizarre distortion of the fundamental purpose of jurisprudence. We are not supposed to convict innocent people and if we do we are supposed to provide them with every opportunity to correct the error. Instead, the Court rules that you may not have a right to prove your innocence and even if there is doubt that can be resolved through scientific means it is insufficient without proving "actual innocence" first.

Sphere: Related Content