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| Locard's Exchange Principle |
Even with the continuous research on wrongful convictions and the increasing number of exonerations, some states have failed to change
their legislature on the preservation of evidence. The act of preserving
evidence is vital in exonerating an innocent person.
According to The Innocence Project, not all states have laws
that require preservation of evidence after conviction. The states that do have
this legislation, however, have not dealt with the limitations of their laws. For
example, some states have a specific time frame in which evidence should be
preserved. After that time has passed, the evidence is allowed to be destroyed.
Other states limit the evidence that can be preserved according to the type of
crime that was committed. It seems that these states are more worried about storage
space than upholding justice. Think of how many innocent people are in
prison right now just because the evidence to prove their innocence was not preserved.
It is unfathomable.
Surprisingly, the federal government introduced an incentive in favor of evidence
preservation. In 2004, the Justice for All Act was passed by Congress. The law
provides financial support to states that preserve evidence, and withholds money
from states that do not preserve it adequately. However, The Innocence Project
has found that in some cases evidence has not been preserved in states that do
require evidence preservation. How are we supposed to trust our state
governments if they are unwilling to help potentially innocent people?
There are a few solutions proposed by the Innocence Project,
which involve amendments to current legislation. One amendment could be
preserving and keeping evidence from the time an individual is convicted until
the petition is made to prove their innocence. Another amendment is to allow for
a new trial if evidence was destroyed. If the jury finds that the destruction
of evidence was intentional, then they can presume that DNA testing of the
evidence would have been exculpatory.
I did not know that this was such a big problem and after reading this, I totally agree with you. I think that evidence should be preserved and that they should not be worrying about space, but more about freeing innocent people. I have watched a lot of those dateline mystery shows and some talk about bringing back cases from up to 20 years ago and some have the evidence still and some don’t. I think it is very important to keep the evidence of any case no matter what the time period is of the crime. It is something that more states should consider and should all have preservation of evidence rights.
ReplyDeleteThat is an issue if evidence in being destroyed. I agree with your idea of doing a re-trial if the evidence has been destroyed before the convict can even file a petition to reopen the case. They should at least feel obligated to keep the evidence until this point, and if not, like you said, it might be because the evidence against the convict wasn't very strong to begin with in which case a re-trial is necessary. I agree with what you said about the state governments only caring about convenience and not fairness under the law.
ReplyDeleteI had no idea that evidence could be destroyed and dismissed like that even before the accused cold re-open the case. It definitely seems unjust and cruel to not give them a second chance especially if the was such little evidence to big with.These amendments seem essential to keep the laws just and the wrongly convicted people out of prison. I wonder if there could be a way to storage all the evidence efficiently so as not to give up any hope of freeing wrongly convicted prisoners?
ReplyDeleteI did not know that there is a time limit on how long the evidence is kept after conviction. There are clear-cut cases, and there are not. I do think most people are properly convicted with the crimes they commit. However, there is small percentage of wrongly convicted cases, especially older cases where technology was not advanced, such as DNA. For serious crimes (especially capital crimes), I do think the evidence should be kept for a long period of time and possibly until the person passes away. What is the balance? It is hard to say. Preserve evidence is expensive. How much should the government spend to keep evidence, just in case someone is wrongly convicted? In which type of crimes or how serious the crimes were? . We all know the government will not spend money to keep evidence for every convicted case.
ReplyDeleteInnocent people that are in jail for quite a while with evidence not being preserve is a very injustice thing that the justice systems works in. The justice system has been proven to be injustice with its corruption in depending money. Money has always been the innovators to corrupt certain system. It is the similar situation how politicians are with the education system. Principles not wanting to fail students who deserve to be failed are afraid it could lead to no funding from the government. I’m pretty sure the Justice system has the same problem and Ron Paul is one of the politician that speaks of this issue.
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