Tampa Criminal Lawyer Uses DNA Evidence to Help Exonerate Innocent Prisoners

Tampa criminal defense attorneys argue that unlike an episode of Law and Order, DNA evidence is not always as cut and dry as it is seen on television.  However, the use of DNA to secure convictions has been growing at a fast pace for many years.  The people who are not benefiting from DNA testing are the people who may be wrongfully accused and convicted before DNA was routinely tested and are now being denied access to this important evidence that could one day set them free.

Federal authorities have been collecting DNA samples from everyone detained or arrested since the passing of the 2005 DNA Fingerprint Act.  NDIS – the FBI’s national DNA database gets more than one million DNA files per year and CODIS, an FBI indexing unit that compiles and compares forensic evidence at the local, state and federal levels has resulted in 90,900 “cold hits” in which biological evidence from an unsolved crime matches profiles in a database.  According to one Tampa criminal lawyer, this has led to several arrests and convictions.

Even though a DNA test might exonerate a prisoner, three states – Alaska, Oklahoma and Massachusetts – does not give their prisoners statutory rights to a DNA test.  Although, exonerations have occurred in Oklahoma and Massachusetts by way of appeal from a defense attorney, access to the testing is still very difficult to receive.  Other states, like Kentucky, restrict DNA testing to only its death row inmates; therefore someone serving a life sentence is not eligible for DNA testing.

The highest number of overturned convictions includes Texas and Illinois where DNA testing is permitted for a post conviction, this according to the Innocence Project, a New York-based not-for-profit legal outfit.  Ironically, Texas accounts for half of all the executions in the United States.

Education is the key in using more DNA testing claims the Innocence Project representatives.  If the DNA is in the system, it should be used to prove a person innocent or guilty.  Earlier this year, Texas established the Timothy Cole advisory panel on wrongful convictions, named after the man posthumously exonerated after DNA tests proved he was innocent.  Every state should have such an advisory board and use DNA in such a way that it captures the real criminals and exonerates those wrongly convicted.

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