DNA to clear 200th person (man jailed for almost 25 years)

[babylonsister]

http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20070423/1a_lede23.art.htm

DNA to clear 200th person
Pace picks up on exonerations

By Richard Willing
USA TODAY

A former Army cook who spent nearly 25 years in prison for a rape he did not commit is scheduled today to become the 200th person exonerated by DNA evidence, underscoring the quickening pace of overturned convictions, according to the Innocence Project.

The New York-based legal group says the 100th exoneration occurred in January 2002, 13 years after the first exoneration. It took just more than five years for the number to double.

"Five years ago, people said that the number (of exonerations) was going to dry up because there just weren't many wrongful convictions," said lawyer Barry Scheck, who co-founded the Innocence Project in 1992 to help prisoners prove their innocence through DNA evidence. "But clearly, there are plenty of innocent persons still in prison. There's no way you can look at this data without believing that."

David Lazer, a Harvard University public policy professor who specializes in DNA issues, says improved testing technology and an increase in the number of lawyers who are taking on DNA cases should result in a continued increase in the number of wrongful convictions that are set aside.

more...

[rpannier]

1. Makes you wonder how many people were executed due to faulty evidence

I wonder how sure the "law-and-order, protecting society, pro-death penalty" types feel everytime they see these stories.

I'm sure they console themselves by saying, "The guys that were executed were guilty."

[rodeodance]

3. I wish our country would have a debate on the death penalty but Dems will

not touch it if they can help it======they are afraid of the soft on crime mantra!

[patricia92243]

4. Republican told me "you have to break a lot of eggs to make an omelet" - direct quote

of what they said - scary isn't it?

[trotsky]

6. Yup, frightens me.

It's the #1 reason I am against the death penalty - I don't trust our system to always be right.

[Philosoraptor]

2. I bet Barry Scheck is feeling guilty about O.J.

He fought long and hard to dismiss dna evidence in the o.j. trial, now he's a dna freedom fighter. Makes you wonder.

[AuntPatsy]

5. Though this newest technology marvel has it's pros, it also has it cons...

using dna to convict is just as easy in far too many ways that it should scare people as well.

[jody]

7. This is why I now oppose capital punishment. n/t

[stillcool]

8. Why are so many Americans incarcerated?....

A Report on the Injustice System in the USA
Written by: Pauline (a contributing writer to IPFG’s Publication; Payaam Fadaee)
Published in Payame Fadaee, Spring edition 2002

The US ruling class has established the largest forced labour sweatshop system in the world. There are now approximately 2 million inmates in US prisons compared to 1 million in 1994. These prisoners have become a source of billions of dollars in profits. In fact, the US has imprisoned a half million more people than in China which has 5 times the population. California alone has the biggest prison system in the Western industrialized world. It has more prisoners than France, Germany, Great Britain, Japan and Holland combined while these countries have 11 times the population of California. According to official figures, Iran incarcerates 220 citizens per 100,000, compared to US figures of 727. Overall, the total "criminal justice" system in the US, including those in prison, on parole and on probation, is approaching 6,000,000. In the last 20 years, 1000 new prisons have been built; yet they hold double their capacity.
Prisoners, 75% of who are either Black or Hispanic, are forced to work for 20 cents an hour, some even as low as 75 cents a day. They produce everything from eyewear and furniture to vehicle parts and computer software. This has lead to thousands of layoffs and the lowering of the overall wage scale of the entire working class. At Soledad Prison in California, prisoners produce work-shirts exported to Asia as well as El Salvadoran license plates more cheaply than in El Salvador, one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere. A May/99 report in the Wall Street Journal summarized that while “more expensive private-sector workers may lose their jobs to prison labour, assigning work to the most cost-efficient producer is good for the economy.” The February/00 Wall Street Journal reported “Prisoners are excluded from employment calculation. And since most inmates are economically disadvantaged and unskilled, jailing so many people has effectively taken a big block of the nation's least-employable citizens out of the equation.”

Federal Prison Industries (FPI) whose trade name is UNICOR exports prisoner-made products as well as selling them to all federal agencies as required by federal law. FPI manufactures over 150 different products in 99 factories in 64 prisons (with 19 new ones on the way) in 30 states. It is the federal government's 35th largest contractor, just behind IBM and is exempt from any federal workplace regulations.
FPI's prison workforce produces 98% of the entire US market for equipment assembly services, 93% of paint and artist brushes, 92% of all kitchen assembly services, 46% of all personal armour, 36% of all household furnishings and 30% of all headset/microphone/speakers, etc. RW. Feb/00 FPI consistently advertises for companies "interested in leasing a ready-to-run prison industry" especially following congressional testimony in 1996 that reported a "pent-up demand for prison labour." Meanwhile, shareholders profiting from prison labour consistently lobby for the legislation of longer prison sentences in order to expand their workforce. At least 37 states have legalized the contracting out of prison labour to private corporations that have already set up operations inside state prisons. Prisons' business clients include: IBM, Boeing, Motorola Microsoft, AT&T Wireless, Texas Instruments, Dell, Compaq, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Nortel, Lucent Technologies, 3Com, Intel, Northern Telecom, TWA, Nordstrom, Revlon, Macys, Pierre Cardin, Target Stores, etc.
http://www.ashrafdehghani.com/articles-english/on%20prison.htm

In 1985 one out of every 320 Americans were in jail.
In 1995 one out of every 167 Americans were in jail.
Between1980 and 1994, the number of people in federal and state prisons increased 221%.
Today, 2 million Americans are in prison.
1.2 million are African-American men.
While there is debate over their underlying causes, these staggering statistics are generally thought to result from rigid drug laws, mandatory minimum sentences and increasingly tough legislation— such as California’s "three strikes" law. One fact remains undisputed: prisons have become big business.

The Business of Prison Labor
A prison-industrial complex has emerged. The increased prison population, a strong economy and the tightest labor market in 30 years have given rise to prison privatization and the expanded use of prison labor. Big name corporations compete with each other to underwrite prison construction with private, tax-exempt bonds and without voter approval. More and more states across the country are implementing mandatory labor for inmates, necessitating partnerships with outside industry. These developments fuel a national debate over prison labor practices in the U.S.
-------------------
Prison Partners
In the tiny town of Lockhart, Texas a private prison run by Wakenhut (a for-profit private corporation) does business with a company called LTI. In this partnership the prisoners assemble circuit boards bound for hi-tech corporations. For LTI, moving manufacturing to the Lockhart prison was a no-brainer. There they found a captive workforce that did not require benefits or vacation pay, major tax incentives and a brand new assembly plant rented for only a symbolic fee. As a result, LTI’s plant in Austin, Texas was shut down and 150 people lost their jobs. In Michigan, through a similar arrangement, the majority of Brill Manufacturing Company’s workforce lost their jobs to state prison inmates.
http://www.itvs.org/shift/prison.html

[johnaries]

9. The best argument against the death penalty i can think of. nt

[Bitwit1234]

10. Can not understand

why some states still resist the law they want passed, that everyone who was convicted can have DNA evidence reviewed.

Why does a state resist. I know if I were a prosecutor, and a person was convicted, I would welcome a form of evidence to be presented that would prove or disapprove their conviction. So what if they were wrong. Years ago they went with the evidence they had and sometimes it pointed to that person. But if they could be proved innocent, I would be elated.

[Peace Patriot]

11. Ah, me! When are we going to realize what a brutal--and self-brutalizing--act it is

for the state to commit cold-blooded murder against any person. It is the dark fascist view of the world that criminals are irredeemable. You can never, ever make that assumption about someone--no matter how violent, or insane, they may be. That is God's judgement to make, not ours. We are not God. We can NEVER know what is really going on in the soul of a criminal, nor can we EVER have a justice system so perfect that it does not inflict cold-blooded state murder on completely innocent people. Where did we ever get this idea? In fact, our justice system is so IMPERFECT, right now, that injustice is GUARANTEED. When was a rich man ever sent to the death chamber?

You only have to contemplate George Bush and Alberto Gonzales and their heinous death chamber operation in Texas to know where this assertion of state OMNIPOTENCE leads: to sadism, and torture, and thence to the casual slaughter of over half a million people in Iraq for their oil.

It is our obligation, as fallible human beings, to sustain life in hope of redemption, and to require wise and healing punishments for those who have broken laws and/or harmed others. Restitution and community service, where possible. Assistance to create a better life, since most of the people in jail are there for being poor, more than anything else. This is not to say that we can't or shouldn't protect ourselves from violent criminals. Of course we should. But if we spent only a fraction of the money that Bush has squandered on slaughtering innocent people in Iraq, on poverty prevention and on a better atmosphere and healing programs in prisons, we would be a lot safer in every way, not to mention the ethical and moral improvement in changing our attitude toward the imprisoned and the condemned. Are we a progressive society, or not? That is the question we need to ask. Has George Bush's dark, psychotic, fascist view of the world succeeded here? Or do we reject it and seek something better?

How many innocent people have we killed in state death chambers? We don't even know. But that is just half of the problem--condemning innocent people to death, because they didn't have the means to prove their innocence. The other half is the brutalization of our culture with the attitude that killing people solves problems.

Kudos and laurel wreaths to those who have fought so hard--against overwhelming odds--to expose the first part of the problem: innocents condemned to death. Now we need to work on the second part: Who the hell do we think we are, to deliberately, methodically, coldly snuff out ANYONE's life?

[Peace Patriot]

12. I just read the statistics above on prisoner-workers. How appalling this is!

My jaw just dropped to the floor, reviewing these stats.

I think this may be even worse than the death penalty--creating an imprisoned workforce with absolutely no human, civil or labor rights--although the two things go together. The brutalization of cold-blooded state murder, and the gulag of prisoner-workers. Are we any better than Stalinist Russia? These medieval institutions--the global corporate predators who are oppressing us all, in so many ways, from unjust war to highway robbery against the poor and middle class--need to be dismantled, along with dismantling much of the prison system, and removing laws and judges that incarcerate people for little or no cause.

But first: We need to restore our right to vote! Rightwing Bushite corporations now control the counting of our votes, with 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, and virtually no audit/recount controls--a fascist coup that occurred during the 2002 to 2004 period. And until we restore vote counting that everyone can see and understand, we are nearly powerless to enact any reform.

Priority no. 1: Transparent elections!