Supreme Court Hears DNA Case - Innocence Project Co-Director Peter Neufeld argued before the U.S. Supreme Court

Supreme Court Hears DNA Case
On March 2, Innocence Project Co-Director Peter Neufeld argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that the constitution allows prisoners access to DNA testing that can prove their innocence. The Innocence Project represents William Osborne, who has been seeking DNA testing in Alaska for years. Click here for resources on the case, media coverage, videos and more.
From The Innocence Project website

Innocence Project client William Osborne was convicted in Alaska in 1993 for a crime that DNA testing could prove he didn't commit. Alaska has arbitrarily refused Osborne’s requests for DNA testing for years – even though the testing would be performed at no cost to the state, and the state now concedes that DNA testing could prove his innocence.

High Court Considers Convicts' Rights to DNA Testing

This is great new:
An eye witness and a jailhouse snitch said he did it. But a man convicted 16 years ago of rape says he's in prison for a crime he didn't commit.
William Osborne says a DNA test would prove he's innocent. But the question is whether the DNA trumps all other evidence.
The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments Monday on the case that could guarantee due process of law to convicts seeking evidence that could exonerate them.

When convicted of the brutal rape and kidnapping of a prostitute in 1993, Osborne said he didn't do it.
"It's extremely hard for me to sit here and hear all the accusations, charges that basically make me look like a monster," Osborne said at his sentencing hearing.
Osborne reportedly confessed to the rape during a parole hearing, but now says a condom found at the crime scene will prove his innocence.

"If there is biological material connected to the crime, which the State of Alaska has conceded, which if tested could prove him innocent -- it might also prove him certainly guilty. But it would show one way or another," said David Rudovsky, a University of Pennsylvania law professor who has represented several inmates freed after post-conviction DNA tests.
Prosecutors claim convicts aren't entitled to post-conviction DNA testing. But last year an appeals court ruled in Osborne's favor.
Nationwide, DNA tests have exonerated 232 convicts, including Dennis Fritz, who spent 12 years in prison.
"When someone's denied DNA testing, and finally after years and years they are granted testing and it proves that they are in fact innocent, that means that for all of those years there is someone else out there that was actually the perpetrator," Fritz said.

Osborne's attorney decided against examining the semen sample prior to his first trial, fearing it could conclusively link him to the crime.
Alaska is one of only six states that do not allow prisoners to petition for DNA testing. Attorneys for Alaska say prisoners don't have the right to old evidence.

"Now he's trying to play procedural games to get out of prison," said Paul Cassell, a University of Utah law professor and former federal judge who spoke on behalf of victims' rights. "Osborne should be required to go through the normal process to get access to this kind of information -- he should have to file a habeas corpus petition. That way he would be respecting crime victims' rights."
The Innocence Project -- an organization that aims to help prisoners who could be proven innocent through DNA testing -- is arguing the case on behalf of Osborne.

"Alaska has set up this mechanism that gives people the opportunity to prove their actual innocence, and yet it won't give them the one test, which is probably the only test, that would meet that quantum of evidence needed to prove your actual innocence," said Peter Neufeld, co-director of the Innocence Project.
States that don't allow the testing fear a ruling against them will open the floodgates to prisoners making the request, with the states picking up the tab.

But the Innocence Project says that's not the case.
"It's not a key to open the door of the courthouse," said Bill Oberly, director of the Alaska Innocence Project. "There are very few people who have actual innocence claims."
The case before the Supreme Court could strengthen the rights of prisoners across the nation who may be innocent but still wait. The court expressed some skepticism about giving a broad constitutional right to convicts facing DNA testing.
But Justice David Souter says a person should be able to test claims of innocence.
Contact Ashton Goodell at agoodell@ktuu.com

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Source KTUU.com Alaska's news and information source High court considers convicts' rights to DNA testing

Innocence Project Benefit, A Celebration of Freedom and Justice

Photo left to right: Dennis Fritz - John Grisham - Barry Scheck - Janet Difiore - Peter Neufeld
Exonerated man and victim’s family are reunited at the Innocence Project second annual benefit.


Here is a great story from the Innocence Project about the event:
PHOTOS AND SLIDESHOW CLICK HERE

While jazz pianist Jonathan Batiste played “What a Wonderful World,” at the Innocence Project benefit, “A Celebration of Freedom and Justice,” on May 7 in New York City, exoneree Dennis Fritz asked 65-year-old Peggy Carter Sanders to take the stage with him and dance. Fritz was sentenced to life in prison and was wrongfully incarcerated for 11 years for the murder of Sanders’ daughter, Debra Sue Carter of Ada, Oklahoma. Fritz and his co-defendant Ron Williamson developed a relationship with Carter’s family after their exoneration in 1999. Both men were exonerated through DNA testing and with the help of the Innocence Project.
Williamson passed away in 2004, but his sisters Renee Simmons and Annette Hudson also attended the benefit. Williamson’s family, Carter’s family, and Fritz came to New York from all around the country to join the Innocence Project in honoring John Grisham for his best selling book, The Innocent Man, which tells the story of Williamson’s wrongful conviction. Fritz shared a table at the benefit with two of Carter’s relatives—her cousin, Christy Sheppard, and he mother Peggy Carter Sanders.

A recent New York Times column by Jim Dwyer looks at the poignant moment last week when Fritz and Sanders danced as 600 Innocence Project supporters looked on. The column discusses the friendship forged between the two wrongfully convicted men and the mother of the victim—despite some people’s unwillingness to accept that a mistake had been made in the case:

“Ms. Sanders saw it plain. All around her, though, people refused to rewrite the ending to her daughter’s murder, clinging to the belief that Mr. Fritz and Mr. Williamson somehow had been part of the killing, a spurning of reality so common that it has practically become an epidemic as DNA tests, year in and out, clear the wrongfully convicted.”

Read the full story here.
Fritz was one of a dozen exonerees who attended the benefit. Also honored was the law firm Mayer Brown, for its collaboration with the Innocence Project in reforming eyewitness identification procedures.
Learn more about Dennis Fritz and Ron Williamson's . cases.
Learn more about how the Innocence Project is working with victims and their families, including Christy Sheppard and Peggy Carter Sanders, to improve the criminal justice system. (See page 10 of this PDF for “Common Interests.”)
PHOTOS AND SLIDESHOW CLICK HERE