DNA evidence exonerates suspects, so why do some prosecutors continue to push for convictions?
Today, despite the fact that genetic testing has proven itself to be a reliable means of determining innocence, some prosecutors continue to fight off attempts to free those wrongly convicted. In some cases district attorneys “have spun creative theories” to keep convictions from being overturned.
The fate of an inmate armed with powerful new evidence of innocence still rests with local prosecutors, some of whom have spun creative theories to explain away the exculpatory findings. In Nassau County on Long Island, after DNA evidence showed that the sperm in a 16-year-old murder victim did not come from the man convicted of the crime, prosecutors argued that it must have come from a consensual lover, even though her mother and best friend insisted she was a virgin. (The unnamed-lover theory has been floated so often that defense lawyers have a derisive term for it: “the unindicted co-ejaculator.”) In Florida, after DNA showed that the pubic hairs at the scene of a rape did not belong to the convicted rapist, prosecutors argued that the hairs found on the victim’s bed could have come from movers who brought furniture to the bedroom a week or so earlier.
“They essentially argued that there were naked movers,” said Nina Morrison, a senior staff lawyer at the Innocence Project, a New York-based group that seeks to exonerate wrongfully convicted inmates.
Why prosecutors sometimes fight post-conviction evidence so adamantly depends on each case. Some legitimately believe the new evidence is not exonerating. But legal scholars looking at the issue suggest that prosecutors’ concerns about their political future and a culture that values winning over justice also come into play. “They are attached to their convictions,” Garrett says, “and they don’t want to see their work called into question.”
Few offices have fought post-conviction evidence with as much gusto as the Lake County state’s attorney’s office, which is coming under increased scrutiny for what defense lawyers and law professors suspect is an alarming number of wrongful convictions. One murder case has unraveled, and several other rape and murder convictions are now being challenged. “They can never admit a mistake,” said Kathleen Zellner, a lawyer who is suing Lake County on behalf of a man named Jerry Hobbs, who spent five years in jail for killing his daughter and her friend; he was released last year after sperm found inside one of the girls was linked to a convicted rapist and accused murderer. “They have to solve cases quickly, and if a problem develops or doubt develops about a person’s culpability, they feel like they have to press on,” she said. “It’s a self-defeating philosophy.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/magazine/dna-evidence-lake-county.html?_r=1&hpw=&pagewanted=all