January 10, 2008 New York Times
Editorial
More Than a Steak Dinner
A Texas judge was so delighted last week to free a wrongly convicted inmate — after 27 years in prison — that the judge bought him a steak dinner and taught him how to use a cellphone to spread the news. The fact that this happened in Texas, famous for its draconian criminal punishments, was heartening. Most heartening of all was that Dallas County, where it occurred, is turning into a model for the rest of the nation in preserving potentially exonerating evidence in capital cases.
There are more than two million inmates in American prisons and jails, and some studies estimate that as many as 5 percent may be innocent. There are few procedures in place, however, for the wrongly convicted to put forth evidence to exonerate themselves.
The Texas inmate, Charles Chatman, who was serving 99 years for rape, was fortunate that Dallas County has saved many specimens. When the specimen in his case, a swab taken from the rape victim, was tested, Mr. Chatman’s DNA did not match. He became the 15th prisoner to be exonerated in Dallas County since 2001 and one of more than 200 inmates nationally freed from prison through the pioneering use of DNA by the Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal group.
While DNA evidence has captured the popular imagination, Mr. Chatman’s story — and that of many postconviction exonerations — is also in large part about eyewitness misidentification, the most common factor in wrongful convictions. The Innocence Project has proposed some important reforms that states should use in upgrading their criminal justice system. These include improvements in the use of eyewitness testimony and electronic recording of interrogations.
Better oversight and funding of crime labs is also crucial, along with creation of innocence commissions to manage claims of wrongful conviction. A groundbreaking federal law now grants federal inmates access to DNA testing. Most states and localities are lagging in doing this, and in properly preserving evidence.
Finally, for all the instant joy, most of the exonerated are never compensated for their lost lifetime. Society owes those who wrongly spend years in prison more than a steak dinner and cheering courtroom.
