WASHINGTON - -Prisoners do not have a constitutional right to DNA testing after their conviction, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday, even though the technology provides an "unparalleled ability both to exonerate the wrongly convicted and to identify the guilty."
In the court's first examination of how to treat the rapidly evolving field of biological testing, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for a majority that said it is up to the states and Congress to decide who has a right to testing that might prove innocence long after conviction.
The "challenges DNA technology poses to our criminal justice systems and our traditional notions of finality" are better left to elected officials than federal judges, Roberts wrote in the 5-4 decision.
"To suddenly constitutionalize this area would short-circuit what looks to be a prompt and considered legislative response," he wrote.
The case was one of the most anticipated of the term, given the revolutionary role DNA testing has played in modern criminal proceedings. The Innocence Project, a group representing those who say they have been wrongfully convicted, said such testing has exonerated 240 people nationwide, at least 17 of whom had received the death penalty.
Dissenting justices, led by Justice John Paul Stevens, said the right to post-conviction DNA testing should not depend on the widely varying laws enacted by the states. Allowing a prisoner to test DNA evidence at his own expense would "ascertain the truth once and for all," Stevens wrote.
"On the record before us, there is no reason to deny access to the evidence and there are many reasons to provide it, not least of which is a fundamental concern in ensuring that justice has been done," he wrote. He was joined in dissent by Justices David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.
The case at hand comes from Alaska, one of three states without a law allowing post-conviction access to biological evidence.
William Osborne was convicted of the 1993 rape and assault of a prostitute in a secluded area near the Anchorage International Airport. Osborne wanted to pay for a more discerning test of semen found in a condom at the crime scene, which prosecutors agree would almost definitively prove his guilt or innocence. But prosecutors refused to allow the test, and Alaska courts agreed he did not qualify under the procedures they had established.
