October 12, 2010 - PRESS

PRESS

TEST ALL DNA IN SKINNER CASE EDITORIAL THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS
 OCTOBER 12, 2010

Test all DNA in Skinner case Tuesday, October 12, 2010 Editorial – The Dallas Morning News Attorneys for Texas death-row inmate Hank Skinner have launched somewhat of a Hail Mary pass in efforts to get untested physical evidence in his murder case off to a DNA lab.

It has come to this: Skinner's lawyers will stand today before the U.S. Supreme Court and argue the merits of a civil rights lawsuit against a district attorney's office that refuses to subject the likely murder weapons and other items to forensic tests.

At best, the door is barely open for the defense. The court has been reluctant to stretch civil rights statues for challenges to such matters as a state's procedures on access to DNA. If Skinner loses, our state again could be in the embarrassing and outrageous position of authorizing an execution with potentially exculpatory evidence locked away.

Skinner was convicted in 1995 in the murders of his girlfriend and her sons in the Panhandle town of Pampa.

Though found with the victims' blood on him, Skinner maintains he was too incapacitated by drugs and alcohol to kill them. His trial attorney made a strategic decision to ask for DNA tests on only some of the physical evidence.

Bowing to media pressure, the DA unilaterally arranged to test more items in 2000, but not two bloody knives, a bloody towel, a bloody jacket, material beneath the victim's fingernails or a vaginal swab.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has blocked tests on those items, ruling that Skinner had a decent trial lawyer who made a decent deal on testing, and a deal is a deal. But in light of what is known now about DNA exonerations, could any such deal be reasonably defended today?

Critics of Skinner's civil rights lawsuit worry that, should he prevail, federal courts could be flooded with challenges to states' procedures on access to DNA testing. The court system has adjusted before, however, after the emergence of technology and recognition that post-conviction testing corrects grievous mistakes.

Texas courts have not ground to a halt in the nine years since prisoners gained the right to petition for DNA tests.

Finally, there's the issue of finality. The DA in the Skinner case says the victims' loved ones deserve it, and we agree.

But the appearance of finality can be illusory. Rape victims involved in 20 Dallas County DNA exoneration cases know that. At one point, they thought they could go on with their lives knowing justice had been done, but it really hadn't been.

Opponents of Texas' 2001 law providing access to DNA said the courts already had what they needed to deal with potential cases of miscarriage of justices, a position that looks silly today.

It's possible that Skinner is as guilty as the West Texas sky is blue. Texas courts say they're sure of it. But they don't have all the facts, and there's no excuse not to have them. http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/editorials/stories/DNskinner_1013edi.State.Editio n1.fb23b1.html