Here's another article on that Supreme Court decision that says convicted criminals do not have a constitutional right to DNA testing after their conviction. It still sounds screwy to me. I can understand that the High Court might decide this is a matter for the states to decide…but should an innocent person be sitting in prison because he's in a state that hasn't gotten around to upgrading its laws to deal with the new technology of DNA testing? Seems to me human rights and decency oughta trump that little obstacle.
Of course, I come to this situation with a long-held (and ever-growing) belief that our court system ain't as good as we'd like to believe and that innocent folks are convicted all the time. I felt that way even before DNA testing began exonerating convicts left and right. I also feel that most (not all) authorities go out of their way not to let convicted folks prove their innocence. It's too embarrassing, plus you can get sued. Better to leave the wrongly-convicted behind bars, even though that means that the real criminal gets away with it.
That really is The Perfect Crime, after all. Not only do they never pin it on you but they convict someone else…so they stop investigating and try real hard not to let him prove he didn't do it. Next time I kill someone, that's how I'm aiming to set things up.
I understand that in the case the S.C.O.T.U.S. decided, the guilty party had previously waived DNA testing, and that he'd also made confessions he has since recanted. He may well be as guilty as a body could be and is just grasping at the flimsiest of straws, looking for a way out of the slammer. But DNA testing doesn't take long and isn't expensive (the convict has even offered to pay the costs) and it has a way of settling things, once and for all. It would have taken a lot less of the government's time and money to test the DNA, rather than let this thing linger on through appeals. Moreover, doesn't the state have a compelling interest in proving they got the right guy? Even if it turns out he's guilty?