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Dallas DNA exonerations expose evidence retention flaws

If the Dallas crime lab hadn't kept evidence from Cornelius DuPree's case 30 years ago, he wouldn't be a free man working as a legislative intern this session for state Sen. Rodney Ellis. But evidence retention issues are too often relegated to the back burner, even in the innocence reform movement.A USA Today story by Kevin Johnson ("Storage of evidence crucial to exonerations," March 28) makes an excellent point about all the DNA exonerations out of Dallas, which has seen as many innocent men walk out of prison based on postconviction DNA testing as the rest of Texas combined: The reason isn't that Dallas convicted more innocent people than everybody else, they just saved the evidence so it was later available for testing. Reports Johnson:In Dallas County, the wrongs are being righted because "the evidence ? decades after it was collected ? was there to test," District Attorney Craig Watkins says...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on March 28, 2011 (boomark / email).