DNA has the power to cut short nightmares -- the horror of an innocent man behind bars for a crime someone else committed, the fear of a murderer walking free and looking to kill again.
In the past 16 years, DNA testing has freed scores of prisoners found to be wrongfully convicted, resolved old mysteries including murders and rapes and transformed the debate over the death penalty. It has shaken the foundations of the criminal justice system itself.
DNA proved pivotal again on Thursday, when an analysis confirmed that Roger Keith Coleman was indeed the man who raped, stabbed and nearly beheaded his sister-in-law, as a jury concluded.
Coleman was executed in 1992, proclaiming his innocence as he went to the electric chair.
The case was closely watched by both death penalty advocates and protesters because no executed convict in the US has ever been exonerated by scientific testing.
Despite the lack of an explosive result in the Coleman case, the power of DNA is unquestioned and is sure to come into play again.
Advocates for reform remain convinced that there are other executions that need to be retested, sure that an innocent person somewhere along the way has been executed -- even as prosecutors and courts have been hesitant to go back and revisit cases that juries and courts have deemed closed.
"There are many more like the Coleman case," said defense attorney Barry Scheck, co-founder of the New York-based Innocence Project, a legal clinic that seeks to exonerathe inmates through DNA testing.
"DNA has shown, whether it's the death penalty or not, there are flaws with eyewitness testimony, false confessions and crime labs. We know many more people have been wrongfully convicted than anyone thought." Scheck said.
It took years of effort to get DNA evidence accepted by the courts, with the first exoneration -- of David Vasquez, convicted of second degree murder in Virginia -- coming in 1989. It began with a trickle, and then became a flood. The 100th exoneration came in late 2001.
"There are all these cases. There's a crescendo of cases, of innocence," Scheck said.
And the impact has hit everyone from police officers to judges.
"It was a world-shattering event," said Geoff Alpert, a criminal justice professor at the University of South Carolina. "It's kind of like computers. That's how my kids think of it. The before and after differences are enormous."
Scheck and others such as Centurion Ministries, a New Jersey organization that investigated Coleman's case and became convinced of his innocence, argue that with DNA tests exonerating 172 wrongfully convicted prisoners over the years, the technology raises bigger questions about the justice system itself.
By proving flaws, DNA raises doubts about other cases in which genetic testing doesn't play a part. DNA only can help in cases where biological evidence ties the victim to the criminal, such as rape cases or murder cases where the criminal's blood or skin -- or maybe even a chewed-up piece of gum -- is left behind.
But DNA evidence cuts both ways -- as in the Coleman case.
Death-penalty supporters say DNA can help strengthen the case for capital punishment by determining with scientific certainty that those convicted are guilty.
Such supporters say they're willing to support ways to curb flaws that lead to wrongful convictions -- from presenting photo lineups of suspects to victims to videotaping police interrogations that can lead to false confessions. But they dismiss allegations that DNA evidence proves the justice system is deeply flawed.
"That's absolute hogwash," said Joshua Marquis, district attorney of Clatsop County, Oregon. "Wrongful convictions are episodic, not epidemic. They're highly isolated, individual cases."
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
RSS