February 29, 2012
Alabama Refuses To Allow Important DNA Test For Death Row Case
By Susie Madrak
Andrew Cohen writes in The Atlantic about a particularly infuriating
capital case in Alabama. As a reporter, these stories are depressing
because you see prosecutors clinging to bad convictions, usually for
political reasons:
Another month, another man on death row, another excruciating case that
illustrates just some of the ways in which America's death penalty regime
is unconstitutionally broken. This time, the venue is Alabama. This time,
the murder that generated the sentence took place 30 years ago. And this
time, there is an execution date of March 29, 2012, for Thomas Arthur, a
man who has always maintained his innocence. He also has the unwelcome
distinction of being one of the few prisoners in the DNA-testing era to be
this close to capital punishment after someone else confessed under oath to
the crime.
Late last month, I profiled the wobbly capital conviction against Troy
Noling in Ohio and there are remarkable similarities between it and the
Arthur case. Both involve white defendants. Both include contentions of
innocence and allegations of bad lawyering at trial. Both include a lack of
physical evidence linking the defendants to the crime. Both include
crucial witness testimony that borders the farcical. And both include state
officials reluctant to permit sophisticated DNA testing that might
definitively answer questions about whether the defendants committed the
murders they will die for.
Arthur's attorneys are even willing to pay for that testing, the few
thousand bucks it would be, and the testing could be completed by the
execution date. It is here where prosecutors and judges lose me when they
prioritize "finality" in capital punishment cases at the expense of
"accuracy." It would cost Alabama nothing to let Arthur's lawyers do the
testing. And it might solve a case that already has cost the state millions
of dollars. Instead, Alabama wants to finally solve its Arthur problem by
executing him. No matter how the new DNA test could come out, the state is
more interested in defending its dubious conviction.
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/alabama-refuses-allow-important-dna-t