Court rejects DNA access claim

Read case carefully, the court DID NOT SAY there is no right no matter what the circumstances of a case are. In essence, this case was not correct to decide the ultimate issue, but for this fellow there was no constitutional right. Further, this is an area of law still evolving in the states and NOT YET ripe for a final U.S. Supreme court decision on the ultimate isssue.

6-19-2009 Scotus Blog:

Splitting 5-4, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that an individual whose criminal conviction has become final does not have a constitutional right to gain access to evidence so that it can be subjected to DNA testing to try to prove innocence. This was one of four final rulings the Court issued Thursday, leaving ten remaining. The next release of opinions is expected on Monday.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., writing for the majority in District Attorney’s Office v. Osborne (08-6), noted that DNA testing provides “an unparalleled ability” to prove innocence or guilt, but its availability “cannot mean that every criminal conviction, or even every criminal conviction involving biological evidence, is suddenly in doubt.” The opinion is available here.

The task of writing rules to control access to DNA evidence “belongs primarily” to the legislature, the Chief Justice wrote. Pursuing a “freestanding and far-reaching constitutional right of access” to DNA evidence through a civil rights lawsuit, Roberts wrote, would “short-circuit” efforts now being made by the federal government and many states to develop tools on access to such evidence. “There is no reason to constitutionalize” access through the courts when elected officials are making “a prompt and considered” response to the DNA phenomenon, the opinion concluded.

While the decision appeared to be focused on whether such a right of access exists after a criminal conviction has become final, when states presumably have more authority to shape their responses to new challenges to earlier convictions, the language used by the Court majority made it appear that the sweep of the decision may turn out to be considerably broader.

Two of the Justices who joined the majority said in a separate opinion that they would have gone further in rejecting the DNA access claim in the case, asserting that such claims should not be pursued in a civil rights lawsuit, but through a habeas plea — but then only after first trying the challenge in state court. (The Chief Justice’s opinion assumed, without deciding, that the case had been properly pursued as a civil rights claim.)

In an opinion written by Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., he and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy also said that, if a defense lawyer fails to seek DNA testing during trial, and does so for tactical reasons, there is no constitutional right to seek access following conviction. Justice Clarence Thomas joined them on that second point, but not on the need to pursue the habeas route.

In another major ruling on criminal law, available here, the Court, dividing 6-3, decided that if a jury finds an individual not guilty on some counts, but can’t agree on the others, prosecutors may not try that individual again on the “hung” counts if they had a common element with those on which the jury acquitted. The ruling came in a case growing out of the Enron Corp. scandal — Yeager v. U.S. (08-67). Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority.

..Source.. by Lyle Denniston