A FAILING JUSTICE SYSTEM

“If I were not innocent of this crime,

I would have to be insane

to request DNA fingerprinting”.

By Victor M Adamus

When I lived in Virginia a case that made a mockery of the Justice System and what the Constitution views as “cruel and unusual punishment” was the callous moment when the State denied a condemned prisoner on death row the chance to prove his innocence with a DNA test.  The trial of career criminal, Joseph O’Dell, held the local media attention and prior to his execution even made CNN news and the nightly news.  He was convicted of rape and murder in 1986.

He was arrested in a bar fight and held without bond because tire tracks found were “similar” to the tread on his truck.  Bloodstains on his jacket did not match that of victims so testimony of a jailhouse informant and one dubious witness who reasserted his testimony then recanted it was enough  to prove beyond a reasonable doubt to a jury that he had committed the murder.  The blood stains were actually determined to be “inconclusive”.  This was an age of DNA where States using it had let 114 death row inmates off or released because the evidence, if introduced in court at the time of their trial, would have drastically changed the outcome.

But for O’Dell the Appeal court denied his request to have the semen tested.  He was executed, killed by the state, in 1997.  And his story doesn’t end here with him dying.

The Catholic Church and O’Dell’s widow asked a judge to release the jacket into their custody so they could pay an independent lab to test the DNA.  The prosecution argued that O’Dell had stolen the jacket and it wasn’t rightfully his to give to the family.  Not only did the judge decline to release the semen on the jacket or the jacket itself he gave the prosecution permission to burn the evidence.  Talk  about “case closed”.  To reporters in the media it looked like the State was running from the bear.  Hiding a possible truth after the death of what could have been another innocent victim of the system put to death with no recourse by the family for closure. 

The entire case was one of arrogance.  What today would be unacceptable from the get go. 

Americans have always had pride in our system of justice.  The advent of DNA and other types of chemical evaluation of materials has changed the course of presenting evidence in courts everywhere throughout the land.

But if the judge had only listened to O’Dell “If I were not innocent of this crime, I would have to be insane to request DNA fingerprinting” O’Dell could have been a free man today.