DNA Bill Moves Forward
WASHINGTON, Sept 22 — Kirk Bloodsworth was the first. When a Baltimore County judge convicted him on March 8, 1985, of sexual assault, rape, and first degree murder, 23-year-old Bloodsworth was sentenced to death.
In 1989 it happened again in Massachusetts. An 11-year-old Roxbury girl was raped after being abducted from her school bus stop. She described the attacker to her mother, who then based on her daughter’s description, pinpointed a man and reported him to the police. The man was Marvin Mitchell, then 48, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
But both men were innocent. Bloodsworth spent nine years in prison before becoming the first person in the nation to be freed based on DNA evidence in 1994.
And then on April 23, 1997 Mitchell won a new trial based on DNA testing that excluded him as the attacker. He was freed, after serving eight years in jail.
According to Rep. William Delahunt (D-Mass.), of 116 individuals in 25 states have been released from death row after being wrongfully convicted since 1976, 12 were released based on DNA evidence proving their innocence.
“Some of them came within days, hours, of being put to death,” Delahunt said Wednesday. “Imagine the potential miscarriage of justice if these individuals had not had access to DNA technology.”
And still, Delahunt said, there is no federal law that properly ensures access to DNA technology for persons who claim to be wrongfully convicted.
This week, the nation came one step closer. Yesterday, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee approved the “Justice For All Act of 2004,” which includes Delahunt’s “Innocence Protection Act” that he introduced more than four years ago.
The new bill, expected to reach the House floor for a vote next week, includes provisions to protect victim’s rights, test both a backlog of forensic data and more than 300,000 kits used to collect evidence of rape nationwide. And as per Delahunt’s provisions, the bill ensures access to DNA technology for those who maintain their innocence.
Introduced by Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wisc.), the bill would provide almost $1.3 billion to programs protecting both criminals’ and victims’ rights. It also would authorize grants for monitoring of death penalty trials.
“This brings together the most important DNA considerations to come out of Congress,” Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), senior Democrat on the committee, said at the hearing Wednesday
The Senate Judiciary Committee also approved its version of the bill, “Advancing Justice through DNA Technology Act,” on Tuesday. The House bill contains many of the same provisions as the bi-partisan bill sponsored by Sen. Judiciary Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) and Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), the committee’s senior Democrat.
A number of organizations and individuals already have spoken in support of the legislation
“The legislation, which passed in the committee in an 11 to 7 vote, is an important step forward for innocent victims of crime and for innocent people who might otherwise be sentenced to death,” said John Terzano, director of The Justice Project, a non-partisan organization in Washington that advocates for social justice. “The leaders in the U.S. Senate Judiciary took an important step today. We strongly encourage the Senate and President to follow in their lead.”
Bloodsworth, the first to be exonerated on DNA evidence and the man whose experience plays prominently in Delahunt’s quest for legislation, issued his own letter to Congress last May. “I spent nine years of my life in prison, two of them on death row, for a crime I did not commit,” he wrote. “And I am dedicated to making sure this never happens to anyone else. I will continue my quest to find solutions to our broken and flawed criminal justice system.”
“No one,” he wrote, “should have to wait 20 years for justice.”
Delahunt said yesterday that he could not agree more wholeheartedly.
“I served as a district attorney for more than 20 years,” he said, “I remember the mistakes, more than the true convictions. And I remember the victims, the victims of the criminal justice system gone wrong.”
