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More on the Skinner Ruling

By Steve Hall

"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...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on March 07, 2011 (boomark / email).