A new Texas law, which took effect in 2001, allows defendants who were convicted with DNA evidence to petition for DNA retesting. Now Harris County has about 200 pending requests, and they receive an additional 12-15 each month. Court officials have assigned three attorneys to determine which cases have legitimate chances of finding exculpatory evidence.
Chron.com reported the attorneys assigned to go through cases are veteran defense attorney Bob Wicoff, defense attorney Thomas Martin, and former prosecutor Kelly Smith. Columnist, James Pinkerton, interviewed the three attorneys, who had some interesting feedback on what to expect from the case reviews.
Wicoff stated that crime labs and law enforcement have become incestuous, making results unreliable. This statement seems obvious, but many folks seem to turn their heads thinking law enforcement would never manipulate testing results to get what they needed.
Although the attorneys make no real guesses as to how many exonerations will come out of these 200 cases, Wicoff said, “Maybe none, maybe 30.” It sure will be interesting to follow the review of these cases.
The only true way of getting fair and unbiased DNA test results is to hire an independent forensic DNA laboratory to complete the testing. Instead, we have prosecutors spending millions in tax dollars to get evidence to convict defendants. Then the state has to spend millions more to give the defendant a fair second opinion. It doesn’t make much sense to me.
