This decision by the Supreme Court kind of boggles my mind:
I don’t get it, what the hell are they actually syaing here? I feel like I must be really missing something.
Bricker, DSYoungEsq., anyway…what’s going on here?
I don’t think the SC wants to be bothered every time a technology is improved. Most states permit it; Osburne had the misfortune to be arrested in one of the holdouts.
The articles I read said the the majority saw it as an unnecessary and inappropriate “constitutionalizing” of the problem, and that it was properly up to the states to pass laws on the matter (which many have done but not the state that the case arose from).
It’s very simple: Convicts do not have a right to DNA testing. However, they do have a constitutional right to DNA! Lots of it! In every aperture! 
He admitted to the crimes of which he was convicted in an application for parole, as well as at his parole hearing.
After 14 years in prison, I’d probably admit to anything to get back out and have a chance at life. It just sounds like the state is trying to avoid a costly lawsuit for wrongful imprisonment. DNA testing should be automatic and routine in all cases where it is available, and the convicted is willing to pay for the services.
I don’t know how it works in the US, but in the UK, parole is not generally permitted for those who don’t admit guilt. Some people will, of course, have the strength to make a principled stand by maintaining their innocence, but I can’t say I’d blame a person too much for just saying “OK, OK, I did it, just let me the fuck out of here!”
I have no idea about the person in the OP, of course.
This is more than a little bit fucked up. The SC seems to be saying “hey, an innocent locked up is no reason to rock the boat”. In other words, criminal justice isn’t really about justice.
Guy’s got a solid case for false advertising right there.
Justice isn’t the result, justice is the process.
Can a person’s admission of guilt in a parole hearing be used against him in future appeals or anything else? That would seem to violate the right to avoid self-incrimination.
An admission of guilt in a parole hearing is voluntary. You have the right not to self-incriminate, but that doesn’t mean the state can’t use your admission as evidence. This is an assumption, but I doubt you can be forced to speak at a parole hearing.
Admitting guilt was a condition of parole. He could have just stayed in jail. I doubt many of us would opt to stay in jail.
IANAL
Plea bargains and admissions of guilt have the effect of closing the door to future evidence of actual innocence. They also have the effect of getting you out of prison earlier than the maximum allowable sentence.
In many states, proof of actual innocence is not enough to warrant an appeal; you have to demonstrate procedural errors in the original trial. The Supreme Court decision just validates this in the states where it is law. It doesn’t close the door on DNA evidence appeals everywhere else.
Did the process include examination of this evidence during the trial? If it did not, for whatever reason, should the process therefore allow for its examination when that becomes possible? It seems to me the process would be otherwise deeply flawed.
That sounds like it ought to be fixed. Otherwise there exists the possibility of a procedurally airtight case ending in the conviction of an innocent person.
The SC’s main complaint is not with Osborne’s case, but with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. In its ruling, the 9th accepted an argument that the same due process rights that apply before and during a trial should apply afterward. The SC says that postconviction rights are fundamentally different, as due process has been exercised. Adequate provisions for postconviction relief exist in Alaska, regardless of laws specific to DNA, and the Court says Osborne should use them instead of trying to expand due process.
Remember, this is a “reverse and remand” writ – the case is going back to the appeals court for a decision that complies with the SC’s opinion. Osborne also has the right to habeus corpus, but apparently doesn’t want to file any claim of innocence until he has the DNA results.
You are mixing apples and oranges.
Until you are convicted, you have certain rights, rights which are designed to maximize the chance that you will not be incorrectly convicted. Despite these rights, a certain number of people are incorrectly convicted. However, when you raise a right before conviction, we generally try to interpret that right so that your chances of improvident conviction are diminished.
Once you are convicted, you have certain rights, but those rights are much narrower. Why? Because we’ve determined once that you were guilty. Judicial systems like ours have to have some sense of finality in what they decide, else you end up with endless attempts to bite the apple. Just as the prosecution cannot go back and try again with a new theory, or raise up newly discovered evidence and try you again once you were found not guilty (double jeopardy and all that), convicted persons have limited rights to challenge their original convictions. Otherwise, convicted persons would be endlessly challenging their convictions, using whatever new theories or evidence they could contrive to attack the original conviction with, for the obvious reason that no one likes being guilty of a crime.
Now, one set of methods for attacking a conviction is to assert that improper procedure was used to convict you. And there are huge numbers of cases over this kind of attack on a conviction (which can be raised by things like habeas corpus, etc.). Part of what is an ongoing battle among the circuits of the federal courts, as well as in the halls of Congress, is just how much right you should have to attack a trial’s procedure, and it tends to be a variable thing, one of the variables being what the punishment is (e.g.: death). Keep in mind that, for every incorrectly convicted person who manages to get out of the situation through proving incorrect procedure, there are lots of other convicted persons who simply are filing such challenges in the hope that something ends up going their way.
The other way to attack the conviction is to assert that the determination of guilt was incorrect. We are somewhat less likely to be willing to let you revisit this aspect for the simple reason that all an unconvicted person has to do to avoid conviction is raise a “reasonable doubt” about his/her guilt in the mind of a single juror. Thus, virtually ANY evidence that you raise post conviction can be asserted to be sufficient to raise a “reasonable doubt” in the mind of some hypothetical juror. Just as we don’t want the prosecution holding back on their efforts to try the case, with the idea that if their current method fails, they will try again with some added or “new” evidence, we don’t want the defendant playing the same game (advice from attorney: “well, we could put you on the stand to tell your story, but then they get to ask you about your alibi, which isn’t exactly airtight, so we’ll try leaving you off the stand the first trial, and if you are convicted, we’ll put you on the stand to tell your story and take our chances on the alibi”). So it can take something extraordinary in the way of “proof” of innocence before we’ll let the convicted person have a second bite.
Which means, of course, that it is perfectly possible for an incorrectly convicted person to have trouble obtaining a reversal of his/her conviction.
Which brings us to the Supreme Court of the United States. Assuming our incorrectly convicted person was convicted in State A of a state crime, and is asking the Supreme Court of the United States for relief, what the person is doing is asking the SCotUS to establish that the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause requires that State A let him try and prove his innocence. That is, he/she is asserting that whatever scheme State A has for challenging a conviction on its merits post-conviction does not afford him/her “due process of law.” Since we take it as a truism that attacking a verdict post-verdict is something we don’t want to encourage except when absolutely necessary, and since we have already established that virtually any evidence raised after the fact can be asserted to be sufficient to “prove” innocence, you can understand that the SCotUS is reluctant to force State A to allow our allegedly incorrectly convicted person a chance to “prove” his/her innocence. After all, there is very little such evidence that conclusively, beyond any reasonable doubt, proves innocence. For example: the victim recants and says the convicted defendant didn’t do it. Seems pretty good, doesn’t it, especially if the victim’s testimony was a substantial portion of the evidence that convicted our person? But people recant for a variety of reasons, not all of which have to do with the actual truth of the matter. Similarly, someone else stepping up and claiming to be the actual perpetrator may not really be the perpetrator, and this has happened often enough that we cannot use that as conclusive in many cases.
And, of course, there are other mechanisms for dealing with improper convictions. For example, the governor of the state can simply issue a pardon, which ends the deal right there.
So, you can see that it’s not so obvious that it “ought to be fixed.”
So justice is an innocent person serving time for a crime they didn’t commit? This is justice to you?
Thoughts on your post. Of course I’ve never been anywhere near the legal profession, so things that may be blatantly obvious to trial lawyers and judges are more than likely hidden secrets to a layman like me. A little patience as I ask technical questions would be greatly appreciated.
Which seems to be the problem here, at least until the DNA evidence is tested (if at all).
This statement isn’t exactly fully relevant to the case under discussion; however it does raise the question of why the DNA evidence wasn’t used in the original trial. Not pegging you directly with the responsibility of finding this answer, but it does assume some importance here.
While I can understand the logic of trying to reduce the caseload in the American court systems, using the guilty verdict as its basis is tautological. “We’re going to reduce your ability to challenge the process because of the findings that process produced.”
That may very well be, but does every appeal go straight to a jury trial? I’ll expand on this further down the post.
Krokodil briefly touched on this; as it is it’s irrelevant to the case under discussion as this is not the approach the accused is using.
And here we get to what I feel is the heart of the matter. The evidence doesn’t go straight to a jury trial, does it? Does it not go through lawyers (both prosecution and defense) and judges to determine if the appeal has any merit? Would such people therefore not be the litmus test for reasonable doubt? What I mean is, if it doesn’t raise reasonable doubt in the minds of the lawyers handling the defense, and they can’t raise reasonable doubt in the mind of the judge charged with handling the appeal, what chance does it have of going to jury trial? Is this not already an acceptable stopgap for frivolous use of the judicial system’s time and resources?
Don’t think anyone’s arguing the defense should adopt this tactic. I certainly am not. And, again, since we’re looking at a post-conviction appeal and not a trial, this is a largely irrelevant issue to the case at hand.
If DNA evidence doesn’t meet the requirement of extraordinary, what does?
Which is currently the issue under debate, unless I’m greatly mistaken.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but as I understand it the preliminary conversation ran along these lines:
OSBURNE. State of Alaska, you have DNA evidence that will prove my innocence. I’ll pay for you to test it; please do so.
ALASKA. Tough noogies, Jack.
Would it not therefore be reasonable to turn to SCOTUS? (heh… every time I see that I think John Duns Scotus… draw your own inferences. Man, this is some good beer…)
Repeat question about DNA evidence meeting this standard.
Argued, yes. Established, not by a long shot. The process by which this evidence is taken to a jury trial hasn’t been spelled out yet and shouldn’t be assumed.
No, I can’t. Alaska may have evidence that would raise reasonable doubt, period - doesn’t matter if it’s a juror or a lawyer or a trial judge. A justice system true to its name would hold itself duty bound to investigate said evidence.
I don’t think I’m reaching that far out into speculative fiction to say that DNA evidence in a rape trial would probably do the trick.
The issues of recantation and motives thereof are indeed an issue worth discussing - but not here because that’s not what the debate is about. DNA evidence, where available, is about as close to conclusive as we’re able to get these days.
No, I can’t, because what you’ve done is brought up a number of side issues regarding appeals of conviction that have nothing to do with the case at hand. You’ve provided some hypothetical examples as to why frivolous appeals might tie up the time and resources of America’s court system but you’ve provided no hard argument as to why the State of Alaska has the right to refuse to test potentially exculpatory evidence, or why SCOTUS is correct in affirming that right, except with the basic argument that “they found him guilty already, and besides the courts are swamped”.
‘Osborne then sought postconviction relief in Alaska state court. He claimed that he had asked his attorney, Sidney Billingslea, to seek more discriminating restric-tion-fragment-length-polymorphism (RFLP) DNA testing during trial, and argued that she was constitutionally ineffective for not doing so.1 Billingslea testified that afterinvestigation, she had concluded that further testing would do more harm than good. She planned to mount adefense of mistaken identity, and thought that the impre-cision of the DQ Alpha test gave her “‘very good numbers in a mistaken identity, cross-racial identification case, where the victim was in the dark and had bad eyesight." Osborne I, 110 P. 3d, at 990. Because she believed Os-borne was guilty, “‘insisting on a more advanced . . . DNA test would have served to prove that Osborne committedthe alleged crimes.’” Ibid. The Alaska Court of Appeals concluded that Billingslea’s decision had been strategic and rejected Osborne’s claim. Id., at 991–992.’
Pages 7/8 of the PDF.
That’s some tough ti**y.
I only skimmed over much of it, but I wonder if there was any consideration given to the level of advancement in DNA techniques in relation to the RFLP method mentioned above and whether refusal to use the original method of testing impacts on the right to re-test in light of developments. Or more to the point, what developments do there have to be in testing technology before you gain the right to a re-test?