Second Chance on Death Row

The Innocence Project, which has used DNA testing to help free at least 65 wrongly convicted death row inmates in several states, is coming to California. Last week, California Western Law School in San Diego announced that it will house the California Innocence Project, which is slated to start work this fall. Justin Brooks, who will oversee the project, faces a rising tide of e-mails and letters from death row inmates, their parents and lawyers, all seeking help.

The theory behind the Innocence Project, founded in New York in 1992, is simple: Despite its constitutional and procedural safeguards, our criminal justice system is not infallible. California does a better job than some other states in which some defense attorneys have arrived in court drunk or dozed through trials in capital cases. But there are bungled cases here as well. Just Monday, a federal appeals court overturned a California death sentence because of poor lawyering. Even with competent counsel, the odds can be stacked against defendants.

For instance, public defenders, who represented most of the 561 men and women now on California’s death row, are so burdened by heavy caseloads and tight budgets that exculpatory evidence is sometimes not discovered until after a trial ends. DNA testing, far more precise than blood typing, was not widely available until the 1980s. Once in prison, inmates who believe that DNA evidence would exonerate them must come up with $5,000 to $7,000--and that’s if the physical evidence used in their trial has not been destroyed and if the court is willing to take another look. Those are big “ifs.”

The California project is patterned after programs already in place at law schools in Illinois, Wisconsin, Florida and Washington. They rely on volunteer attorneys and law students. In Illinois, law and journalism students have uncovered so many gross errors in the trials of inmates on death row that Gov. George Ryan earlier this year blocked all executions pending an inquiry.

Even the staunchest supporters of the death penalty should readily agree that no state is well served by carelessness--or worse--in such high-stakes cases. The California Innocence Project is most welcome.