[USA] DNA Evidence and the Death Penalty / JURIST, 30 May 2007
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2007/05/dna-evidence-and-death-penalty.php
William S. Sessions
"Argues that Governor Eliot Spitzer’s recent proposal to expand the New York DNA database and an Ohio Supreme Court ruling liberalizing DNA testing for inmates should be welcomed as necessary and overdue efforts to protect public safety while pursuing meaningful justice, especially for prisoners facing the prospect of capital punishment.
... Shortly after I became Director the FBI established a DNA laboratory we hoped could be used to verify that a suspect had indeed committed a crime. During my years as a U.S. Attorney and federal judge in Texas I had seen rapists and murderers walk free for lack of biological evidence; these were the cases I had in mind when we established the laboratory in Washington, D.C. The results of those first 100 tests astonished me. In thirty percent of cases the DNA gathered during the investigation did not match the DNA of the suspect. In three out of ten cases not only did we have the wrong person, but the guilty person was still at large. In capital cases the stakes were unnervingly high: the prospect of executing an innocent person was only slightly more appalling than the prospect of murderers and rapists walking free, unidentified and dangerous. The statistics today are roughly the same as they were 19 years ago."