Friday, November 19, 2010
Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. has decided to end a Bush-era policy of allowing federal prosecutors to get criminal defendants to waive their rights to future DNA testing as part of pleading guilty in exchange for lighter prison sentences.
The waivers have been widely used by U.S. Attorneys in places including the District of Columbia, Virginia and New York, even though federal law grants prisoners the right to seek DNA testing to prove their innocence.
More than 260 inmates have been exonerated by such tests, writes The Washington Post.
Also, statistics show that innocent people sometimes plead guilty in the hope of getting a shorter sentence. One quarter of the 261 people who have been exonerated by DNA testing had falsely confessed to crimes they didn’t commit, and 19 of them pleaded guilty, says the New York-based Innocence Project.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Attorney General Eric Holder to Reverse Bush Policy on DNA Waivers (by Jerry Markon,
Washington Post)
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