"Supreme Court Allows State Prisoners to Seek DNA Evidence Through US Civil Rights Law," is Debra Cassens Weiss' post at ABA Journal.
A Texas death-row inmate seeking a right to DNA evidence may pursue his claim under the federal civil rights law, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled.
The Supreme Court ruled in 2009 in District Attorney’s Office v. Osborne that inmates have no constitutional right to DNA evidence but left open the question whether suits seeking the evidence could be brought under Section 1983. In today’s 6-3 ruling, the court allowed the claim.
The suit by inmate Hank Skinner had alleged the Texas DNA statute, as construed by the courts, violated his Fourteenth Amendment right to due process. As a result, there was no bar to federal jurisdiction under the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, which bars federal trial court review of state judgments, the Supreme Court held.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the majority opinion (PDF). Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a dissenting opinion, joined by Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Anthony M. Kennedy.
And:
The state tested some of the blood evidence from the scene, and some of it was incriminating, including bloody palm prints in the room where one victim was killed. But fingerprints on a bag containing one of the knives found at the home were not a match. Left untested were the knives, an axe handle, vaginal swabs from the girlfriend’s body, fingernail clippings and some hair samples. Skinner maintains the likely killer was the girlfriend’s uncle, an ex-con who is no longer alive.
Ginsburg said her opinion does not express any opinion on the ultimate resolution of Skinner's federal suit.
She discounted the state’s claims that allowing Section 1983 suits for DNA evidence would lead to a proliferation of litigation. “In the circuits that currently allow §1983 claims for DNA testing, … no evidence tendered by [Texas prosecutors] shows any litigation flood or even rainfall,” Ginsburg wrote.
Ginsburg noted that the Prison Litigation Reform Act has placed constraints on prisoner suits to “prevent sportive filings in federal court.”
Bill Mears posts, "Supreme Court says Texas inmate has right to DNA testing," at CNN.
The Supreme Court has given another legal reprieve to a Texas death row inmate who says DNA testing of crime scene evidence will prove his "actual innocence."
It was unclear how the ruling will apply to similar legal challenges.
The justices by a 6-3 vote on Monday said Henry "Hank" Skinner does have a basic civil right to press for analysis of biological evidence not tested at the time of his trial.
The very narrow ruling does not yet get Skinner off death row for the murders of his girlfriend and her two sons, but it gives him another legal avenue to pursue to press his claims he did not commit the crimes.
Skinner came within 45 minutes of lethal injection before the justices stepped in and agreed to hear his constitutional claims.
Earlier coverage of the Skinner ruling begins at the link.
Comments