A Times Editorial

DNA justice

Applying DNA evidence to closed cases that predated the technology will confirm the truth and erase questions of guilt.

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 28, 2000

Good prosecutors should embrace DNA evidence for the same reason good umpires and referees should embrace instant replay: The technology will vindicate their original judgment far more often than not.

Yet many prosecutors and other law enforcement officials are defensively resistant to the use of DNA testing -- at least in the cases of convicted criminals whose trials predated DNA technology. Those who care more about justice than their own egos should have no problem with using modern science to erase any remaining questions about the guilt of defendants tried and convicted years ago on the basis of less definitive evidence.

Consider the case of Crosley Green, on Florida's death row for the 1989 Brevard County murder of 22-year-old Chip Flynn. No physical evidence linked Green to the crime at the time of his 1990 trial, and private investigators claimed last year to have produced evidence that prosecution witnesses had lied in their testimony against Green.

At the urging of death penalty opponents, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement reopened Green's case to allow for DNA testing of two hairs found in Flynn's truck after the murder. Green agreed to supply a blood sample, a North Carolina laboratory performed DNA testing not available at the time of Green's trial -- and the results placed Green at the scene of Flynn's murder.

The DNA test results reinforced Green's conviction, but they did not discredit those who championed Green's cause. Our prisons are full of people who claim to be innocent, but only a small percentage actually are. Yet justice demands that every possible precaution be taken to prevent an innocent person from being wrongly convicted. In capital cases, such as Green's, that obligation is magnified.

Law enforcement officials and the rest of society have another important reason to support DNA testing: In those rare cases in which DNA evidence is exculpatory, it gives renewed impetus to efforts to identify, arrest and prosecute the real criminals before they can commit more crimes. Neither prosecutors nor defendants' advocates have anything to fear from DNA evidence. Only criminals do.

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