Oral arguments are being made in the case right now. The SCOTUS Blog case file is here. A transcript will be available later.
Today's Dallas Morning News carries the editorial, "Test all DNA in Skinner case."
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has blocked tests on those items, ruling that Skinner had a decent trial lawyer who made a decent deal on testing, and a deal is a deal. But in light of what is known now about DNA exonerations, could any such deal be reasonably defended today?
Critics of Skinner's civil rights lawsuit worry that, should he prevail, federal courts could be flooded with challenges to states' procedures on access to DNA testing. The court system has adjusted before, however, after the emergence of technology and recognition that post-conviction testing corrects grievous mistakes. Texas courts have not ground to a halt in the nine years since prisoners gained the right to petition for DNA tests.
Finally, there's the issue of finality. The DA in the Skinner case says the victims' loved ones deserve it, and we agree.
But the appearance of finality can be illusory. Rape victims involved in 20 Dallas County DNA exoneration cases know that. At one point, they thought they could go on with their lives knowing justice had been done, but it really hadn't been.
Opponents of Texas' 2001 law providing access to DNA said the courts already had what they needed to deal with potential cases of miscarriage of justices, a position that looks silly today.
It's possible that Skinner is as guilty as the West Texas sky is blue. Texas courts say they're sure of it. But they don't have all the facts, and there's no excuse not to have them.
Nina Totenberg reports, "High Court Weighs Inmate's Access To DNA Evidence," for NPR's Morning Edition.
By 2001, Skinner had new lawyers, and when Texas passed a law providing for access to evidence for DNA testing, they tried to use the new law to prove someone else committed the crime. The lawyers wanted to be able to test evidence at the crime scene not tested before — evidence that they contended would prove Skinner was not the murderer and that the victim's uncle was.
The Texas courts and the lower federal courts refused the request to allow more DNA testing. They ruled that Skinner had made a strategic decision at trial not to ask for access to the evidence for more testing, and that he was not entitled to a second bite at the apple. The lower courts also said Skinner did not meet the criteria specified in the law — namely that he didn't show that DNA evidence could prove his innocence.
But Nina Morrison, a senior staff lawyer for the Innocence Project, says that even among the 259 men freed from prison as a result of DNA testing, Skinner's case is unusual.
"In my experience, this case is pretty rare in that there is a very substantial amount of evidence that all comes from the crime scene, that all potentially comes from the killer, that has never been tested," Morrison said. "Here, for example, he has argued that if he is able to get DNA from the two knives that were found at the scene, a bloody jacket that was found next to the body, and the fingernails of one or more of the victims, this might all add up to the same profile of a single killer other than Skinner."
Gregory Coleman, representing the state of Texas, counters that separate and apart from the DNA evidence, there was massive evidence of Skinner's guilt. He maintains that no amount of new DNA evidence could exonerate Skinner.
"Every court that has looked at this has said that the mass of evidence, separate and apart from the DNA evidence, much of which he doesn't contest, shows that he is guilty," Coleman said. "This is not a case in which the DNA evidence has any real possibility of showing that he's innocent."
Morrison replies that in other cases, evidence that once looked persuasive has been wiped out with DNA testing.
"I personally have had a number of clients that were identified by five or six eyewitnesses who were positive that was the guy, who gave full confessions, who had blood testing or fingerprints that appeared to be from them, all of whom turned out to be stone-cold innocent once we did a conclusive DNA test," she said.
Coleman, however, argues that Texas has crafted a reasonable law that seeks to provide justice while at the same time barring frivolous and burdensome claims.
"Texas, like most states now, provides a system for somebody in his shoes to come back and say, 'There is evidence out there that I'd like to be tested, and it would show that I'm innocent,' " Coleman said.
But Skinner's lawyers say that proof is the physical evidence at the crime scene that has never been subjected to DNA testing."Hank Skinner’s last fight," is the title of Edwin Rios' report in North by Northwestern. The school's Medill Innocence Project has been involved in the case for a decade. Here's the beginning:
Hank Skinner sat in a Texas prison and relished his final meal — a chicken thigh, a salad, French fries, catfish, a double bacon cheeseburger and a milkshake. He was set to die by lethal injection in less than an hour for the murder of his girlfriend and her two sons.
Then the telephone rang. It was his attorney. There was news: the U.S. Supreme Court had stayed his execution. The court needed longer to review his attorneys’ appeal.
He felt “ecstatic,” says Medill professor David Protess, who heads the Medill Innocence Project and has been investigating Skinner’s case for 10 years. Protess and Skinner’s attorneys have called for Texas District Attorney Lynn Switzer to order tests on DNA evidence that may exonerate him. For years, the DA’s office has refused.
In May, two months after issuing the stay, the court accepted the case. The decision to take the case carries a sprite of luck for Skinner. In 2007, the court took about 80 cases out of approximately 110,000 filed. The court will hear oral arguments on Wednesday to determine whether Skinner is entitled under federal civil rights law to requests that the evidence be tested.
The case relies not just on Skinner’s attorneys’ arguments, but also on the work of Protess’s student journalists, who have investigated it for more than a decade.
Earlier coverage begins with this post.
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