I’ve got to quit paying attention to these lunch room conversations. 
Apparantly there’s a program on tv about convicted felons being proven innocent through DNA evidence. I haven’t seen the show, but several people at lunch today were talking about it.
A few of these folks thought that such proof shouldn’t be considered, and that the innocent shouldn’t go free.
I said “But they’re innocent, why wouldn’t you free them?”. “So? The victims and their families are innocent too. What about them?” said one guy, and the other two agreed. He also opined that Barry Scheck should maybe take the place of some of these people he’s getting out of prison.
Well, I figure that if three of the ten or so people present feel this way, then there must be more out there who do too.
Does anyone reading this feel that once a person is convicted he/she should serve the full sentence, regardless of new proof?
Remember, this guy wasn’t disputing the validity of the evidence, but the fairness to the victims of the original crime.
Peace,
mangeorge
I was going to say that’s hard to believe, but I guess it really isn’t, sadly. You should ask those people if they would be willing to serve out the remainder of the term for those newly found innocent. They might protest that they didn’t do anything, but hey, what about the victims! Somebody’s got to be punished! What does innocence matter?
Holy cow, mangeorge; where do you work?
Perhaps they misunderstand that the DNA establishes that the convicted were factually, actually, truly not guilty and it is not some technicality of the law? If not, I suggest you ask them if they’d like to serve 10 to 20 for the next unsolved crime file your local police department can hand to you.
mangeorge, perhaps you should have asked one of your coworkers if they had been convicted of a crime they knew they didn’t commit,
went to prison and DNA later proved their innocence,
would they rather stay in prison, because somebody has to pay for the crime,
or would they want to be set free because the new evidence say they didn’t do it.
Maybe then they might understand and not be ignorant about DNA.
Some people just can’t tell the truth. They lie by walking upright nad having opposable thumbs.
AFAIK, from a legal point of view they’re more or less correct–if a felon has exhausted his appeals process, and each appellate court has found that the original trial was conducted without any significant errors, then any new evidence that turns up shouldn’t matter from the perspective of the courts. I think that’s the rationale for executive clemency.
Of course, one of the lawyers visiting this board should have a more authoritative opinion than mine.
what I believe Zarathustra is referring to is that on appeal, one needs to argue procedural issues, the assumption that the trial was not fair in some serious manner.
I’ve read Scheck’s book (written with Peter Neufeld and Jim Dwyer), that, coupled with the recent FBI blunders (not even the McVeigh one), concerns me.
In the book, one example was told of the guy who was convicted of rape/murder, DNA proved that he hadn’t raped the woman, the DA shrugged and said ‘well, so what, he still couldda murdered her’. Of course, during the trial, the same DA insisted that whoever raped her, killed her.
and to those who point out ‘but the defendant confessed’, so did Henry Lee Lucas, who confessed to the killing of a victim known only as “Orange Socks”, was sentenced to die in Texas. Of course, after the conviction, it was demonstrated that he was in Florida at the time, working construction. His sentence of death wasn’t carried out. One of the few in Texas that wasn’t.
Off topic, but in this thread it is shown that a man can be forced by the courts to pay child support even after it is proven he is not the father.
Well, no. As is usually the case in the law, it is a lot more complicated than that.
Generally speaking, the point of the appellate process is to review the trial court proceedings for error, and if there was no error, the trial court result is affirmed and final. However, there are various mechanisms for obtaining post-judgment relief, including after the usually final appeal process.
The one most pertinent here is a motion for new trial based upon newly discovered evidence. The crux of the motion is the fact that the evidence was not available to present at the first trial, and not merely that the defendant did not present it. DNA analysis fits squarely into the newly discovered evidence rule -> even twelve years ago, DNA analysis techniques were insufficiently sophisticated to identify a perpetrator from a give sample (sample too small, too deteriorated, too contaminated, whatever) and so the evidence was simply nonexistent. However, subsequent developments in the field now permit reliable results from samples taken many years ago. That is why we are now seeing defendants seeking retrial or release based upon the newly discovered evidence of DNA analysis.
There are some procedural obstacles, since many courts’ power to act on a motion for new trial or relief from judgment is time limited. And, that is why some defendants seek clemency, and why we are now seeing amendments to laws to address the timeliness issue.
Well okay, but if the defense counsel had exonerating DNA evidence available at the first trial and did not present it, wouldn’t the defendant still be entitled to a new trial for ineffective assistance of counsel?
Well, this guy’s main arguement wasn’t around the legal issues, though he did argue that too, but about victim’s rights. He pointed out that a lot of the time the DNA evidence simply proved the original verdict, which is true. And all of the victims had to suffer through the legal stuff again, which is also true.
He said that it wasn’t worth so much suffering for a very few to finally find justice. He would’nt talk about how he’d feel if he were in the place of the wrongly accused.
said it wasn’t germane to the issue. 
Anyway, aren’t we protected against wrongful imprisonment under the 8th ammendment?
Peace,
mangeorge