States adjusting laws to use DNA

NEW YORK - State lawmakers across the country are adopting broad changes to criminal justice procedures as a response to the exoneration of more than 200 convicts through the use of DNA evidence.

All but eight states give inmates varying degrees of access to DNA evidence that might not have been available at the time of their convictions. Massachusetts remains one of the states that do not have laws allowing this.

Many states are also overhauling the way witnesses identify suspects, crime labs handle evidence, and informants are used.

At least six states have created commissions to expedite cases of those wrongfully convicted or to consider changes to criminal justice procedures. One of them, the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, will hold a hearing this month on remedies for people who have been wrongfully convicted.

Laws in several states, including Illinois, New Jersey, and North Carolina, have bipartisan backing, with many Democrats supportive on civil rights grounds and Republicans generally hopeful the changes will inoculate criminal cases against spurious defense arguments.

"Technology has made a big difference," said Margaret Berger, a DNA legal specialist who is on a National Academy of Sciences panel that is looking into the changing needs of forensic scientists. "We see that there are new techniques for ascertaining the truth."

Maryland, North Carolina, Vermont, and West Virginia passed legislation this year to create tougher standards for the identification of suspects by witnesses, one of the most trouble-ridden procedures.

Nationwide, misidentification by witnesses led to wrongful convictions in 75 percent of the 207 instances in which prisoners have been exonerated over the last decade, according to the Innocence Project, a group in New York that investigates wrongful convictions.

Legislatures considered 25 witness identification bills in 16 states this year, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers reported. Five states approved bills, while five states defeated them. Bills are pending in the other states.

"It's become clear that eyewitnesses are fallible," said Lieutenant Kenneth A. Patenaude, a police commander in Northampton, Mass., who is a specialist on witness identification techniques.

Two states, Vermont and Maryland, passed laws this year to improve crime lab oversight to eliminate errors and omissions. Maryland recently passed a law that will hold its crime labs to the same standards as clinical labs, a much more rigorous requirement. Other legislative changes to crime lab oversight are pending in 21 states.

More than 500 local and state jurisdictions, including Alaska, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia have adopted polices that require the recording of interrogations to help prevent false confessions, according to the Innocence Project.

Advocates of efforts to use DNA to exonerate those wrongfully convicted welcome the change. "The legislative reform movement as a result of these DNA exonerations is probably the single greatest criminal justice reform effort in the last 40 years," said Peter J. Neufeld, of the Innocence Project.