Today's Austin American-Statesman carries the editorial, "Win for death penalty advocates."
The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision Monday, provided a significant victory for death penalty supporters by ruling in favor of a condemned Texas man battling for post-conviction testing of DNA evidence gathered at a grisly, triple-slaying crime scene in Pampa.
At the heart of this case is the fundamental question — indeed, the only question — that permeates every death penalty case and every execution: Are we sure we've got the right person?
Death penalty advocates, and we are not among those, should live with the perpetual fear of conclusive post-execution evidence that raises serious questions about guilt.
That is why, as we noted in an editorial last March on the eve of the day on which he was to be executed, death penalty advocates should want the courts to give Hank Skinner the chance to make sure the state has the right man in the Pampa slayings.
The Monday decision, allowing Skinner to pursue a federal civil rights lawsuit in which he is seeking court-ordered testing of DNA evidence not used at his trial, gives him the right to make his case as to why that testing should be done. The ruling does not order such testing. It merely allows his lawsuit — which had been thrown out by lower courts — to proceed.
And:
Last March, the Supreme Court stayed Skinner's execution, hours before it was scheduled to happen, so it could decide whether he should be allowed to pursue his civil rights suit.
The answer, overruling decisions by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, came Monday in a majority opinion penned by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Amarillo Globe-News columnist Jon Beilue writes, "DNA test added to Skinner's to-do list."
Whether you believe he is the scum of the earth or that he was too intoxicated on vodka and codeine to commit the crimes is not so much the issues as this is:
If we live in a civil and humane society and are in the process of killing a man and untested evidence exists that could either further confirm his guilt, raise reasonable doubt or perhaps even exonerate him, how can that simply be ignored? What does that say about us?
"That's a very reasonable question to ask - that's my question," said Matthew Wright, a criminal defense appellate attorney in Amarillo. "But for a lawyer, and thinking what the other side would say, the best argument I've heard is that you're sorta giving someone two chances."
And:
The remaining untested crime scene evidence, which Skinner has tried and failed twice to get the state to test, seems a bit more than a condemned man grasping at straws.
Maybe I've read too much John Grisham. But his nonfiction book "The Innocent Man" is chilling. An Ada, Okla., man in 1989 was sentenced for a rape and murder he did not commit. Misguided police work, forced "dream" confessions, flimsy evidence and unreliable witnesses helped convict Keith Williamson. Five days from execution, Williamson won a new trial and was exonerated by DNA evidence in 1999. Another man, unconnected to Williamson, was later convicted and sentenced to life without parole.
I'm not suggesting the prosecution was anything like this in the Skinner case. But Williamson was one of 78 inmates exonerated from death row since 1973, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. In addition, The Innocence Project reports that more than 260 have been exonerated through DNA evidence.
So what I am suggesting is because of that, this last evidence needs to tested. If Skinner committed the murders, the evidence should prove that and any remaining doubt will be erased, silencing Skinner supporters and exonerating the memory of Busby's late uncle, who some have accused of the crime. If DNA evidence says something else, well...
"Henry Skinner is going to be a cause celebrity," Wright said, "if the evidence is not tested. It will be 'Texas kills people without regard if he's guilty or not.' None of us wants that. If the test is consistent with the jury's verdict, you won't hear that any more. As a person, I can't believe they haven't tested it yet. I'm shocked. It's beyond me. Just have it tested."
It's simply too important not to.
"The U.S. Supreme Court and the Right to Test DNA Samples," is posted at Time. It's written by Michael A. Lindenberger.
Skinner's case will head back to lower courts for argument on the merits. But, whatever happens, the Supreme Court decision is another powerful boost, despite its careful tone and narrow limits, for the use of DNA evidence by inmates who are finding new ways to challenge their convictions. And Texas, home to both the busiest death chamber in the country and, in Dallas, maybe the busiest prosecutor in the country when it comes to reviewing wrongful convictions, remains the place to watch as the justice system struggles with the conflict between the human capacity for error and the finality of death.
Politics Daily legal analyst Andrew Cohen posts, "Supreme Court Clears Path Toward Post-Conviction DNA Testing."
Skinner took his cause to federal court and was hours away from being executed by lethal injection last March when the Supreme Court stepped in to halt the proceedings under way at the Texas state prison in Huntsville. By that time, Skinner's cause had become an international one, largely because of the work performed by members of the Medill Innocence Project at Northwestern University, which sends out teams of undergraduate investigators to look into claims of wrongdoing within the criminal justice system. When Medill investigators looked into the Skinner case, starting in 2000, they found significant problems with some of the evidence Skinner's jurors had heard at trial.
In Skinner v. Switzer, Justice Ginsburg ruled that Skinner was entitled to press state officials for testing under Section 1983 in part because "success in his suit for DNA testing would not 'necessarily imply' the invalidity of his conviction. While test results might prove exculpatory, that outcome is hardly inevitable... results might prove inconclusive or they might further incriminate Skinner." Justice Ginsburg rejected the argument made by Texas' lawyers that allowing such claims everywhere under the federal law would generate a new flood of prisoner litigation. "In the Circuits that currently allow §1983 claims for DNA testing," she wrote, no evidence tendered by Switzer shows any litigation flood or even rainfall."
Earlier coverage of Skinner v. Switzer begins with Texas news reporting of the Supreme Court ruling.
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