Letter asks governor to order retesting of DNA evidence in death-penalty cases. He should do that, and then some.

Date published: 7/6/2005
Decisive DNA
THE EXECUTION of an innocent person is the definitive

example of a criminal-justice mistake that can't be fixed. Virginia has 23 inmates on death row, and ranks second behind Texas with 94 executions since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. (Texas has killed 345 inmates since then, by the way.)
The least that any state can do before imposing a death sentence is to be as certain as available technology permits that it is executing the right person. The advance of DNA science can assist in meeting that basic standard.

Interestingly, the national groundswell in support of DNA "reconfirmation testing" traces its origins to central Virginia, where Fauquier County resident Earl Washington Jr. took the fall for the 1982 rape-murder of a Culpeper woman. An examiner with the Virginia Division of Forensic Science botched an early version of DNA testing in Mr. Washington's case, a miscue falsely connecting him to the crime scene. A later investigation left the testing in other cases handled by the lab shrouded in doubt.

Retesting cleared Mr. Washington, and in 2000 he was pardoned. He is among 119 death row inmates nationwide found innocent and set free during the past 30 years. How certain can anyone be that there are no other denizens of the Death House, in Virginia or elsewhere, shoved toward the gallows by false evidence?

Early in his term, Gov. Warner humanely ordered the re-examination of DNA testing procedures in some 160 criminal cases where such evidence played a role. He stopped short, however, of dictating actual retesting of available DNA evidence. Now a disparate collection of advocacy groups is calling on the governor to order such retesting in death-penalty cases. Signers of a recent letter to this end include the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy, Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, the Virginia NAACP, the Rutherford Institute, the Virginia Catholic Conference, the Virginia Council of Churches, and the ACLU of Virginia. The epistle also bears the signature of Earl Washington Jr.

The signatories spotlight the case of Robin Lovitt, scheduled for execution this Monday. DNA tests provided inconclusive results in his case, and authorities later destroyed the evidence under the improper order of an Arlington County court clerk. The group doesn't maintain Lovitt's innocence; it merely questions the life-or-death certainty of his guilt.

The governor should not just accede to the group's request. He should trump it and order retesting in each of the 160 cases beclouded by the substandard crime-lab procedures. No innocent should rot in prison for a crime someone else did. The wonder of DNA technology lies in the virtual certainty of its findings when properly used. Why not use it to its fullest advantage?


Date published: 7/6/2005
Copyright 2005 The Free Lance-Star Publishing Company.
*Source: http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2005 ... 005/111519