No way out

I can’t imagine anything worse than being held behind bars with no possibility of proving my innocence. Unfortunately people continue to find themselves in this dilemma.

The situation with Guantanamo is unconscionable, with so many people being held for years with no trial and now no clear way to bring this disgrace to closure. I’m sure some of those incarcerated are guilty of crimes. I’m sure they are all guilty of hating the US. But I suspect many are innocent of wrongdoing. In the best of possibilities, they may be offered a chance to be free and move to a place like Palau, where they can live out the rest of their lives separated from their families continuing to hate the bastards who imprisoned them.

My son Dan pointed out a story in last Friday’s Washington Post that sent a similar chill down my spine. Apparently the Supreme Court recently ruled that prisoners do not have a constitutional right to DNA testing after their conviction, even though the technology provides an “unparalleled ability both to exonerate the wrongly convicted and to identify the guilty.”

The case prompting this ruling comes from Alaska, one of three states without a law allowing post-conviction access to biological evidence. William G. Osborne was convicted of the brutal rape and assault of a prostitute in the Anchorage International Airport in 1993. He wanted to pay for a more discerning test of semen found in a condom at the crime scene, hoping to prove his innocence. But prosecutors refused to allow it. Osborne appealed to the federal courts and the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco recognized a right to such testing under the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. (Since I wrote this, my lawyer son pointed out that is really the Fourteenth Amendment, not the Fifth, that prohibits states from depriving people of due process.)

But a divided Supreme Court overruled, leaving the decision on such matters to the individual states. The states vary significantly on this matter. For example, Kentucky only permits post-conviction DNA testing for those on death row, not for those serving a life sentence. And states like Alaska don’t permit it at all.

For people wrongly accused, the bitter reality is the justice system has simply failed them. There is no justice in any of this.