DNA testing has become an integral part of the criminal justice system. Although this technology has been available for decades, cases are still being found that exonerate criminals decades after their original conviction. Recently, an inmate in Texas, Michael Morton was released from prison after spending 25 years for a crime he did not commit.
Morton was accused of beating his wife to death. He was freed after tests on a bloody bandana near the crime site showed different DNA. There are other isolated incidents of late surfacing DNA evidence all over the country, and yet Texas would like to destroy DNA evidence after the completion of a trial.
According to Rebecca Bernhardt, the policy director of the Texas Forensic Services, DNA evidence is destroyed as part of a guilty plea agreement with defendants and is discarded after cases end in conviction. She has been quoted "We have to be very careful about destroying evidence". She listed examples where defendants have pleaded guilty in order to obtain shorter prison sentences, only to later be freed based on later DNA evidence. District attorneys complain all prisoners claim to be innocent and that it is impossible to claim DNA testing on every case.
Bernhardt feels the present situation of storing DNA evidence in police headquarters may not be the safest method of storing evidence. She proposes a separate warehouse for this evidence.
I feel DNA evidence should be stored long after a trial ends. During the proceeding, witnesses have been proven to be unreliable, where as DNA evidence, phone records, and fingerprints have been more accurate methods. Many confessions and convictions have been coerced out of defendants who do not have the most skilled legal advice. Many times, DNA and other records only become available upon appeal. Therefore, keeping this information available until the death of the defendant or their freedom is essential. If the state legal does not have the capability to provide this, there should be a state or national data bank to store material during crime cases.
Last Thursday a classmate of mine wrote an article discussing the poor job of courts in using DNA as evidence prior to sentencing. (“Many times, DNA and other records only become available upon appeal.”) They brought to surface the current release of the wrongly-sentenced inmate, Michael Morton and continued on to defend the use and storage of DNA for future court cases to prevent similar instances from occurring. What I also discovered is that DNA is destroyed and thrown out after cases that end in conviction. However, the justice system is obviously flawed so, as my classmate suggested, evidence should be kept for as long as possibly needed. I liked this article, especially the solutions my classmate provided regarding DNA storage for future use and would agree that our already unjust justice system should make any and all additional efforts to be more just.
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