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Prisoners have no constitutional right to DNA testing to challenge their convictions, the Supreme Court ruled today in a 5 to 4 vote.

The majority seemed concerned that requests for testing would overwhelm—and possibly undermine—the courts. "The availability of new DNA testing, however, cannot mean that every criminal conviction, or even every conviction involving biological evidence, is suddenly in doubt," wrote Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. in the majority opinion.

The power of DNA testing to overturn convictions is clear. DNA testing of biological traces—blood, hair, semen—has exonerated 238 people in the past 17 years, The New York Times reports.

The case before the court involved William Osborne, a convicted rapist in Alaska, who had sought post-conviction testing after deciding against a test in the original trial. Alaska law doesn’t make such testing available to at least some inmates, unlike the vast majority of states.

"There is no question that a small group of innocent people—and it is a small group—will languish in prison because they can't get access to the evidence," Peter Neufeld, a co-founder of the Innocence Project, told the Associated Press.

Although romanticized in popular crime shows, forensics has been criticized for flubbing procedures and overstating conclusions of murky analysis—from fingerprinting to fiber matching. A report released earlier this year by the National Academy of Sciences pinpointed nuclear DNA analysis the most objective, reliable tool for matching criminals to crime scenes.

Read more about how DNA testing is done.

Image courtesy of blmurch via Flickr

6 Comments

1. 1. Marc Lévesque 06:48 PM 6/18/09

   "The availability of new DNA testing, however, cannot mean that every criminal conviction, or even every conviction involving biological evidence, is suddenly in doubt,"
   
   Hun ? There is always doubt in legal systems and new testing would reduce its level. How can it be otherwise.
   
   Doesn't not doing the tests because it may "overwhelmand possibly underminethe courts" end up painting the courts as inefficient, and raise the people's overall level of doubt that the courts are doing their best to reduce the level of doubt inherent in their decisions ?

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2. 2. avidreaderSciAm 08:44 PM 6/18/09

   I have heard the saying "it is better to let 100 guilty men go free then to convict an innocent one". The supreme court has just said the opposite with this ruling.

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3. 3. abarel 12:21 AM 6/19/09

   I agree entirely. The fact that 238 people have been found innocent proves that the testing is inefficient and should be disallowed. This is exactly why the courts are perceived as useless and ineffective by almost everyone.

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4. 4. fyngyrz 02:55 AM 6/19/09

   Sadly, ruling in favor of government convenience over citizens rights, liberties and honor, not to mention actual justice, is the rule, not the exception. We are the proud owners of a legal system is sad decline.
   

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5. 5. fyngyrz 02:56 AM 6/19/09

   ..."in" sad decline, I meant to say. Sorry.

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6. 6. Largo 11:08 AM 6/19/09

   SInce many states allow for this and the "Equal Justice Under The Law" homily exist, how is this reconciled.
   Alito is the writer of the opinion and is exactly what I feared, a man with a criminally lacking sense of fairness.
   This decision to defend the errors of the past is a moral offense.

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