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Death, DNA and the Supreme Court

By Steve Hall

That's the title of an editorial in the Sunday New York Times.  LINK In an age when DNA technology can help identify the guilty and avoid grave miscarriages of justice, states should not be allowed to block testing of available biological evidence before executing someone. The Supreme Court heard arguments on Wednesday over a request by Henry Skinner, a Texas death row inmate, for DNA testing of blood, fingernail scrapings and hair found at the scene where his girlfriend and her two sons were murdered in 1993. In March, less than an hour before he was scheduled to die by lethal injection, the Supreme Court granted a stay of execution to consider taking up the matter of the untested evidence. Seeking to avoid the legal doctrines and deadlines imposed by the Supreme Court and Congress to limit postconviction appeals, Mr...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on October 18, 2010 (boomark / email).