Earlier this month, Jerry Frank Townsend left a Florida prison after serving 22 years for a rape and six murders he did not commit -- freed because DNA evidence proved his innocence.
Townsend is but one of more than 90 innocent men, a half-dozen on death row, who have returned to freedom after analysis of genetic evidence. But legal inertia, small-minded concerns about cost and the skewed priorities of state officials across the country are conspiring to keep the innocent behind bars. Meanwhile, those who really committed the crimes go free.
Despite the steady trickle of innocents from prison gates, only 19 states have passed laws expanding access to DNA testing for those already convicted. And many of those laws are a farce. Arizona, Oklahoma and Tennessee laws expand DNA testing only for those facing a life sentence or the death penalty. Others have strict time limits that are hard to meet for inmates who lack an aggressive lawyer. Still others require the inmate to pay the cost of the tests.
The remaining 31 states use the same rules for DNA as for any other new evidence after a trial. Defense lawyers complain that those rules are typically so strict that they amount to an effective ban. A few states that don't have new DNA laws give the state's attorney general discretion to address the problem. But these approaches are overly restrictive as well. Ohio, for instance, tests only if the testing will ''by itself'' exonerate the convict. New Jersey requires a lie-detector test first.
The result can be excruciating. Just ask Earl Washington. DNA evidence punched a hole in the Virginia farmhand's murder conviction in 1993, but court wrangling over the new evidence stalled his pardon for 7 years.
The excuses for this inattention to justice are thin. When vetoing a DNA-testing bill in March, South Dakota's governor said the testing would cost too much. Never mind that keeping the innocent in jail while the guilty go free carries a different kind of cost: So far, a dozen criminals have been tried and convicted only after the wrongly accused were set free. The federal government, meanwhile, is sending states piles of cash to speed use of DNA: $40 million last year; another $150 million in this year's budget.
Prosecutors' groups say concerns over wrongly convicted inmates are overblown since most post-conviction DNA tests confirm the conviction. That may be true. But with 2 million Americans behind bars, mistakes by only one in 1,000 juries could leave 2,000 innocent people in prison.
In any case, justice can be done only one case at a time.
In recent years, every state has expanded the use of DNA in police investigations and prosecutions. That's good. There's a powerful public interest in seeing those guilty of crimes swept from the streets. But it's no match for society's obligation to make sure the innocent remain free.
The laggard states' tight-fisted lethargy stands as a national
embarrassment.