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Sunday, January 29, 2006
DNA testing -- 92 years lost, and counting
By CARL HIAASEN
The cost of justice is too high for some Florida lawmakers, who'd rather let innocent persons rot in prison than allow DNA testing that would exonerate them.
A staff report to the state House of Representatives estimates that it might cost $2 million annually for crime-lab analysis in cases where genetic evidence would be used to review a criminal conviction.
Apparently some lawmakers and staff members think that's too much to spend in pursuit of the truth. They'd rather blow the extra dough they've got lying around this year on other things -- say, a multimillion-dollar sales-tax holiday for voters.
The fact that not everybody in prison is guilty seems hard to swallow for some of the tough talkers in Tallahassee. Traditionally, the Legislature has been disgracefully reluctant to compensate wrongly convicted citizens for time lost behind bars.
Last year, after an embarrassing hesitation, lawmakers awarded $2 million to Wilton Dedge, who spent 22 years locked up for a rape he didn't commit. Brevard prosecutors had fought doggedly to thwart the DNA testing that ultimately proved Dedge's innocence -- and even afterward they worked to block the undisputed test results from being admitted in court.
Dedge traveled to Tallahassee last week and practically begged the House Criminal Justice Committee to act to abolish the outrageous July deadline for inmates seeking DNA evidence comparisons.
''Can we all agree that DNA testing needs to be done in Florida on inmates? Can we agree,'' Dedge asked, ``there should be no deadline on testing?''
What he heard from committee members was the familiar silence of noncommital. Chairman Dick Kravitz, a Jacksonville Republican, said the panel must hold a workshop before it decides.
Yeah, Dick, this is a tough one. You think about it real hard. Get out your calculator and workshop a few of these numbers:
• Wilton Dedge, 22 years gone.
• Alan Crotzer, wrongly convicted of kidnapping and rape, 24 years gone. He was freed a week ago.
• Luis Díaz, wrongly convicted as the ''Bird Road Rapist,'' 25 years gone. He was freed last summer.
• Jerry Frank Townsend, wrongly convicted of four Broward murders, 21 years gone. He was freed in 2001.
• Frank Lee Smith, wrongly convicted of rape and murder. He was never freed. He died after 14 years on Death Row, and was exonerated 11 months later.
DNA tests cleared all these men. Several of the cases were handled by the New York-based nonprofit Innocence Project and the Florida Innocence Initiative. Nationwide, the Innocence Project has used genetic matching to help clear 173 inmates.
Some lawmakers say wide-scale DNA testing in prison will clog up the courts and crime labs. The possibility for abuse surely exists, but defendants would all but kill their future appeals if the tests confirmed their guilt.
The real fear of DNA opponents is that more wrongly convicted persons will be identified, freed and later seek money from the state -- as they should. If precious years of your life were unjustly taken away, you'd expect and deserve some sort of compensation.
The only worse thing than putting innocent persons in prison is leaving them there, yet that's what proponents of an arbitrary DNA deadline would do. Twice the Florida Supreme Court has intervened to extend the expiration date, giving the Legislature ample opportunity to do the right thing and abolish it.
Gov. Jeb Bush supports eliminating deadlines and giving inmates the right to take DNA tests. So do many prosecutors.
A bill to that effect might actually pass this year, in spite of the grumbling opposition. The measure is sponsored in the House by Rep. Ellyn Bogdanoff of Fort Lauderdale, and in the Senate by Alex Villalobos of Miami.
They're both Republicans. More importantly, Villalobos has clout because he's in line to become Senate president in two years.
Funding is a bogus issue in the debate over DNA evidence. Many inmates would, like Dedge, gladly arrange for their own tests.
This is all about morality. In a justice system that promises to seek out the truth, there's no moral defense for smothering it.
The science now exists to conclusively establish guilt or innocence in many old criminal cases. That makes some folks nervous because it's bound to expose a few mistakes -- by police, prosecutors, judges or juries.
Appalling and immoral
''This is just plain old truth, and it leads you to wherever it leads you. And we shouldn't be concerned about who got their feelings hurt and who won or lost,'' Sen. Villalobos said last week.
``What matters is, if you have something that could definitely prove the right person or the wrong person [is in prison], it's just appalling that you wouldn't do that.''
Appalling is right. Not to mention immoral.
If one in a hundred or even a thousand DNA tests exonerates an unjustly convicted inmate, it'll be worth every penny.
Ask Wilton Dedge or Luis Díaz or Alan Crotzer or Jerry Frank Townsend. You can't put a monetary price on their combined 92 lost years, or on the life of Frank Lee Smith.
The cost of letting that happen again will be measured not only in reparation dollars, but also in shame.