Wednesday, February 12, 2025

CREATORS: DNA Reveals Flaws in Criminal Justice System

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
February 11, 2025

The Innocence Project used to track all DNA exonerations throughout the country. An exoneration clears a convicted person of blameworthiness. Now they track all "Innocence Project successes," which includes all exonerations generated through DNA or other evidence.

There were 375 DNA exonerations between 1989 and 2020. For those 375 men and women and their families, DNA saved them from the anguish and pain of being locked up for a crime they did not commit. For the rest of us, DNA revealed the many flaws in the criminal justice system.

The "other successes" are even more impressive than the DNA exonerations. In "Bringing Ben Home: A Murder, a Conviction, and the Fight to Redeem American Justice," Barbara Bradley Hagerty declared, "The double helix has sparked a revolution." DNA has exposed the errors of our way.

The Innocence Project is right to celebrate those non-DNA exonerations. "[O]verturning a wrongful conviction, even with DNA evidence, is extremely difficult. ... [Without it] it's so much harder," Rebecca Brown of the Innocence Project told Bradley. She goes on to say, "It comes down to, really, serendipity. ... We should not be having to depend on luck."

DNA is not present in every case. However, there are still mistaken identifications, police misconduct and bad forensics throughout the system. The Innocence Project lists six "contributing causes" for wrongful convictions: eyewitness misidentification; false confessions or admissions; government misconduct; inadequate defense; informants; and unvalidated or improper forensic science.

More specifically, in 63% of wrongful convictions there was eyewitness identification; 52% had inaccurate or unscientific forensic analysis; 19% had untrustworthy informants: and 28% had confessions.

Imagine that nearly 3 in 10 people exonerated pleaded guilty to a crime they did not commit. How does that happen?

In 2010, 17-year-old India Spellman was arrested by Philadelphia police for the robbery of a woman with a gun and as the shooter in the robbery and murder of a second person. India and her co-defendant were taken to the police department for interrogation. Although she was a juvenile, her parents were kept from the interrogation room.

As the 17-year-old was alone with the police, a detective hit her in the face and screamed at her. He left the interrogation room and returned with a statement that Spellman signed after detectives refused to read her the content of the statement. The statement was a confession to being involved in both robberies.

Thirteen years later, a judge vacated Spellman's conviction. The trial — which featured a misidentification, a coerced confession and prosecutors withholding exculpatory evidence — had been unconstitutional.

As science evolves, so does the reliability of forensic evidence. The gold standard pre-DNA was the human fingerprint. You may be surprised to learn that the uniqueness of a fingerprint is an assumption, not a well-studied idea.

According to Discover magazine, the "lack of a fundamental scientific basis for the supposed uniqueness of fingerprints — and the inability for apparent experts to reliably match them or even agree on what's required for a match — has seen some federal courts reject fingerprints entirely as evidence."

Even DNA has come under scrutiny. As collection of DNA at crime scenes has become more sophisticated, gathering minute biological samples has emerged as potential for folly. Finding someone's DNA at a crime scene doesn't necessarily mean they were ever at that location. Transfer DNA can spread to objects and places by way of other human carriers.

In one case, according to Discover magazine, a man's DNA was found on a murder victim who was killed in their home. The man whose DNA was found at the crime scene was in the hospital during the murder. The DNA had been transferred by a paramedic who brought the man to the hospital and who later responded to the 911 call made regarding the homicide.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book "The Executioner's Toll, 2010" was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Bluesky @matthewmangino.bsky.social.

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