PUBLISHER'S NOTE: This post is highly relevant to the Larry Swearingen case in Texas. Swearingen is scheduled to be executed on November 16, 2017. From a previous post of this Blog (Link below) October 28, 2015: "The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals for the second time Wednesday reversed a state district judge’s order that would have allowed East Texas death row inmate Larry Swearingen to test DNA from evidence in his murder case. Swearingen, 44, was convicted of kidnapping, raping and killing 19-year-old Melissa Trotter, then a Lone Star College student in 1998. He was sentenced to death in 2000. His execution date has been set and stayed multiple times. The death row inmate has argued that he couldn’t have killed Trotter because he was in jail when she was murdered, and DNA testing would prove that someone else committed the crime. State District Judge Kelly Case twice granted Swearingen’s requests for evidence to be tested...Each time, the court ultimately has ruled that results from DNA testing would not have overcome the “mountain of evidence” establishing Swearingen's guilt."
https://www.texastribune.org/2015/10/28/texas-cca-denies-death-row-inmates-dna-testing-req/
POST: "Why Would Prosecutors Refuse DNA Testing? In this Oregon capital case, it could ensure that the state doesn’t execute the wrong man. Published by 'In Justice Today', (Fair punishment Project) on October 13, 2017. (Thanks to the Wrongful Convictions Blog for drawing this post to our attention. HL);
GIST: "On March 20, 1998, Harriet Thompson was found dead in her Salem, Oregon, apartment. The scene was gruesome, “a scene from a slaughterhouse”
the District Attorney would say — blood stains on the floor, bloody
shoe-prints, bloody towels, a bloody bathroom and a broken, bloody
knife. The police formulated a theory that the crime was a
murder-robbery. A week later, the police arrested Jesse Lee Johnson
because he had some of Thompson’s jewelry, allegedly giving earrings to
his girlfriend and selling a ring. Johnson admitted he had been in
Thompson’s apartment — he knew her — but denied being involved in her
death. At trial, prosecutors presented some forensic evidence — a
cigarette butt, footprints and fingerprints — to argue that Johnson had
been in the house that day and had killed Thompson. Prosecutors offered
to let Johnson plea to manslaughter, which he turned down. He was then
convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death. Johnson
has maintained his innocence for twenty years. Now, his counsel, Steven
Wax of the Oregon Innocence Project, is asking for DNA testing of 38
samples from the crime scene. Many of them were never tested; others
were tested using an older DNA test that has fallen out of use because
it is not as accurate as current methods. The Marion County District
Attorney’s office is opposing any requests to test more evidence,
arguing in their brief that “this is not a DNA case.” Even though DNA testing has helped exonerate over 340 people, there are still prosecutors who oppose disturbing standing convictions, favoring finality over justice. For example, St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCullough defended the capital conviction of Marcellus Williams
even though post-conviction DNA testing pointed to a different person.
McCullough’s office and the Missouri Attorney General’s office continued
to argue that other evidence, mostly consisting of jailhouse snitch
testimony, pointed to Williams’s guilt. Ultimately, the Missouri governor stayed the execution pending an investigation. In another recent Philadelphia case, Anthony Wright
faced execution for a rape and murder that he did not commit.
Wright — who was only 20 at the time of his arrest — says he gave a
confession after being threatened by the police. Post-conviction DNA
testing, which the original prosecutor Lynne Abraham resisted, pointed
to another suspect. Despite the fact that a judge ordered a retrial
based on the DNA results, then-District Attorney Seth Williams prosecuted Wright again and lost. And,
even though DNA testing is the gold standard for convictions and
exonerations, there are differences in how DNA evidence has historically
been processed as well as how that evidence can be used and
interpreted. In the early stages of DNA exonerations, the evidence was
relatively simple — DNA from a rape kit, for example, definitively
excluded the exoneree from the crime. In
Johnson’s case, the DNA evidence requires more interpretation because,
as Johnson admits, he was in the apartment. Therefore, it would make
sense that his DNA would be found on objects also in the crime scene.
For example, some evidence was tested for DNA, but the results were not
conclusive. Some DNA samples — like those from the bloody bathroom and
the likely murder weapon — excluded Johnson, but law enforcement never
matched the DNA to anyone else. Some DNA samples were mixed and
difficult to process. Some DNA matched other people. And some DNA
samples did match the defendant, but they could also have been present
because Johnson had been in the apartment before. (The state used other
evidence — like footprint matching — at trial, but the results were not
only potentially tainted by law enforcement but have also been deemed unreliable by the scientific community.) This
is likely to be the next generation of DNA exonerations — cases where
the DNA can point to other suspects or cast appreciable doubt on a
conviction. Last Friday, Johnson’s counsel
argued in favor of additional DNA testing while the DA’s office
defended their position that the current Oregon law does not apply to
Johnson’s case because, they argued, there was not enough to show that
the results would fully prove Johnson’s innocence. Steve Wax, Johnson’s
legal counsel, argued that the Oregon statute only required a
“reasonable possibility” that the evidence points to innocence. It would
be impossible to prove otherwise until the testing is complete, as Wax
explains. Via email he told me after the hearing, “Seven exclusions of
Mr. Johnson’s DNA from items at the murder scene raise significant
questions about the conviction that we are hopeful further testing could
answer.”
The entire post can be found at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/c
