Program for DNA Testing of Inmates Is Scrapped

By: Richard Willing

The Justice Department has scrapped plans to offer $500,000 in federal grants to pay for DNA testing of some inmates so that prosecutors could verify their convictions, law enforcement sources say.

Attorney General John Ashcroft and other Justice Department officials were lauded by defense lawyers across the nation when the pilot program, which would have paid for the testing of about 250 inmates, was made public in August.

Many defense lawyers have said DNA tests should be offered without charge in any case in which they might prove that a convict is innocent, even if the convict's time to appeal has expired.

The plan was put on hold in August and later killed by the National Institute of Justice, the department's research arm.

Some state prosecutors had complained that the government-funded tests would clog the justice system with meritless appeals.

NIJ Director Sarah Hart says that after the September 11 terrorist attacks, she decided to use the Justice Department's DNA funds to pay for tests that would help identify casualties at the World Trade Center site, and to related research. But department sources say that NIJ has played only a limited role in identifying bodies in New York.

The $500,000 grant plan was proposed during Janet Reno's tenure as attorney general in the Clinton administration. It was finalized under Ashcroft this year.

Since the late 1980's, DNA tests have cast doubt on 99 convictions, including at least 11 that carried the death penalty, says Barry Scheck, director of the Innocence Project, a New York City group that advocates DNA testing.

DNA tests work by comparing a person's genetic profile with blood or other material left at crime scenes to determine whether the person actually committed the crime. The grants would have paid state and local prosecutors to re-examine convictions obtained before the mid-1990's, when DNA tests began to be widely used. The plan would have paid for about 250 tests.

Susan Gaertner, chief prosecutor in Ramsey County, Minn., had hoped to use federal grant money to offer tests to convicted rapists, murderers and others who had argued at trial that they were wrongly identified.

"I'm very disappointed" in the Justice Department's decision to drop the grants, she says. "Maintaining public confidence in our criminal justice system through DNA is apparently not on Ashcroft's screen."

Before killing the program, Justice Department officials said they were interested in making DNA tests more accessible to inmates in part to dispel the notion there were many wrongly imprisoned felons.

Since mid-2000, San Diego prosecutors have used their own funds to review 561 convictions obtained before DNA tests were widely used. They have found only three cases in which DNA testing might exonerate the convict. In two of those cases, a murder and a sexual assault, the convict turned down the free test without explanation. Prosecutors are waiting for an answer from the inmate in the third case.

Offering free DNA tests, San Diego assistant prosecutor Lisa Weinreb says, "sends the right message".

"We try our hardest to get it right", she says. But "if there are innocent persons in prison, we want to do everything possible to get them out".