TheLoop21.com

By: Devona Walker (Add to your loop)
Mon, 03/16/2009 - 00:00

Herman Atkins, at age 21, was wrongfully convicted for raping a woman in Riverside County, California. He was later exonerated.

(Read more about the wrongly convicted.)

Well below the national radar, a network of legal advocates, family members of the wrongfully convicted, college students and lawyers have been fighting local and state authorities to have DNA evidence examined.

They say this technology could exonerate thousands of Americans currently serving prison sentences for crimes they did not commit. In fact, more than 400 people have already been exonerated by a very limited amount of DNA testing. On average, those innocent people served more than 12 years before being released.

“You got all these judges, these police officers and these lawyers. And everybody’s just protecting everybody else,” said Tonja Brown, who has been working for 16 years to prove her brother’s innocence in a 1988 robbery and sexual assault conviction. “They just want to bury it. They just want to bury him. They don’t want anyone to know the truth.”

“They don’t even care that the real criminal is still out there,” said the woman from Nevada, where DNA evidence is only used in death penalty cases.

Many cases involving the use of DNA sound very similar to Brown’s, according to Jeff Chinn, associate director of The California Innocence Project. Local district attorneys often arbitrarily deny requests to test DNA in post-conviction cases. Even though the science is now available to exonerate the wrongfully convicted, they often do not want to jeopardize the finality of criminal verdicts. This prevents family members from getting closure about their loved one's conviction.

Then, even when tests are allowed, often times the original evidence is either missing or compromised. Chinn believes these prevailing facts, in addition to lack of manpower and funding surrounding the issue, ensure we are only exonerating a fraction of the innocent. The process is so cumbersome and disadvantageous to the convicted, he says, it is nearly impossible to determine the extent of the problem.

“How rampant is the problem? We don’t know,” Chinn said. “There are flaws in the way that identifications are done. There are flaws in the way that investigations are done. Not everything shows up in every exoneration. But most of these convictions are based on witness identification and most of it is cross racial.”

For the lucky few who are exonerated, the complications continue. Twenty-nine states do not offer compensation. And apologies, according to Chinn, are even more difficult to come by.

Last week, for some reason, the U.S. Supreme Court remained divided on conducting post-conviction DNA tests. Justice Antonin Scalia even went so far as to say it threatened to open a floodgate for prisoners looking to “game the system.”

This country has begun to address a few of the many problems it has shuddered to acknowledge for decades. But, this country still has a long way to go, especially when it comes to the ethical or equitable treatment of its people. Our criminal justice system, in particular, remains mired in a world of protectionism and denial.

When we as a nation deprive someone unjustly of their freedom, we are not simply stripping them of time. We are denying them their family. We are denying them the opportunity to pursue careers. We are denying them their right to pursue “happiness,” the most inalienable of rights. In some cases, these folks have have been incarcerated so long that when they are released, they must start over entirely. I personally do not understand how any state in this country could refuse compensation. I do not know how our U.S. Supreme Court can argue that citizens do not have the right to exhaust all available options to prove their innocence or that the criminal justice system is not requred to do the same to disprove innocence.

“And all they really want is to have something that will help them get a restart in life, and they want an apology from someone. A lot of times that is not forthcoming form the people who put them behind bars,” Chinn said. “All they want is the government to come out and say ‘Hey we’re sorry.’ ”

They are not as angry as the general public would expect them to be,” he added.

On Wednesday, officials in Virginia confirmed that two more have been exonerated by DNA evidence The cases were part of a mandated review of convictions from 1973 to 1988 after five others were cleared of rape charges.

Just last month, DNA exonerated a man posthumously. Tim Cole — a college student at the time of his arrest on rape charges — died in prison before the state of Texas got around to re-testing his DNA.

Last year, another Texan, James Lee Woodard, was released from prison after serving more than 27 years for a murder. He, too, was ultimately exonerated by DNA testing.

In 1986, Bruce Godschalk was convicted of raping two women in Pennsylvania. While he was incarcerated, his parents and sister died. The local authorities stopped him from having his DNA tested for seven years. Eventually the test were allowed and Godschalk was exonerated. But he served 15 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.

In 1989, Larry Peterson was convicted of raping and murdering a woman in New Jersey. For 10 years, he petitioned for DNA test. In 2005, it was finally allowed, and it exonerated him of the crime. He spent 16 years in prison and had been on death row for the crimes.

If they are not mad as hell, will someone please tell me why not?

“In order for them to get through the ordeal, get through the experience and deal with the hardships, they have conditioned themselves to accepting that they could be there for the rest of their lives. And being angry does not help them get released from prison,” Chinn said. “I have heard exonerees say that time again. The energy I spent on being angry, I just re-directed it to working towards my release.”

For a complete list of Innocent Projects nationwide and men and women who have been exonerated by DNA, click here.

Devona Walker is The Loop's senior reporter/blogger. She writes the Post-Race? blog.

Is it time for America to get rid of the death penalty?

Yes, it's barbaric

Maybe

No, it's needed for certain crimes

I'm not sure