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SUPREME COURT ALLOWS SUIT TO FORCE DNA TESTING OF EVIDENCE THE NEW YORK TIMES
 MARCH 7, 2011
Supreme Court Allows Suit to Force DNA Testing of Evidence By ADAM LIPTAK – The New York Times March 7, 2011 WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday made it easier for inmates to sue for access to DNA evidence that could prove their innocence. The legal issue in the case was tightly focused, and quite preliminary: Was Hank Skinner, a death row inmate in Texas, entitled to sue a prosecutor there under a federal civil rights law for refusing to allow testing of DNA evidence in his case? By a 6-to-3 vote, the court said yes, rejecting a line of lower-court decisions that had said the only proper procedural route for such challenges was a petition for habeas corpus. In her opinion for the majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg emphasized how narrowly the court was ruling. Allowing Mr. Skinner to sue, she said, is not the same thing as saying he should win his suit. Justice Ginsburg added that a 2009 decision, District Attorney’s Office v. Osborne, had severely limited the kinds of claims that prisoners who are seeking DNA evidence can make. The Osborne decision, Justice Ginsburg wrote, “left slim room for the prisoner to show that the governing state law denies him procedural due process.” The case that was decided on Monday, Skinner v. Switzer, No. 09-9000, arose from three killings on New Year’s Eve in 1993. Mr. Skinner contends that he was asleep on a sofa in a vodka-and-codeine haze that night when his girlfriend, Twila Busby, and her two sons were killed. Mr. Skinner says that an uncle of Ms. Busby, Robert Donnell, who has since died, was probably the killer. Prosecutors tested some but not all of the evidence from the crime scene. Some of the test results pointed toward Mr. Skinner, who never denied that he was present, but some of the results did not. His trial lawyer, wary of what additional testing would show, did not ask for it. In the years since Mr. Skinner was convicted, prosecutors have blocked his requests to test blood, fingernail scrapings and hair found at the scene. In their Supreme Court briefs, prosecutors accused Mr. Skinner of playing games with the system, dragging out his case and seeking to impose unacceptable burdens on government resources and the victims’ dignity. They added that testing would be pointless because “no item of evidence exists that would conclusively prove that Skinner did not commit the murder.” In 2001, Texas enacted a law allowing post-conviction DNA testing in limited circumstances. State courts in Texas rejected Mr. Skinner’s requests under the law on the ground that he was at fault for not having sought testing earlier. Mr. Skinner then sued in federal court under a federal civil rights law known as Section 1983, saying that the Texas law violated his right to due process. That suit was rejected in the lower federal courts on the ground that the proper vehicle for a challenge was a petition for habeas corpus. Section 1983 suits are often more attractive to prisoners than habeas petitions because Congress and the Supreme Court have placed significant barriers in the path of inmates seeking habeas corpus. Justice Ginsburg wrote that a Section 1983 suit was available in cases where the relief sought by the inmate would not “necessarily imply the invalidity of his conviction or sentence.” Since there was no telling whether the results of the tests Mr. Skinner sought would establish his guilt, clear him or be inconclusive, the suit was proper, she wrote. Habeas petitions are appropriate, on the other hand, she wrote, where inmates seek “immediate or speedier release from confinement.” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined the majority opinion.
Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Samuel A. Alito Jr., dissented. Justice Thomas predicted that the ruling on Monday would flood the courts with civil rights suits. “What prisoner would not avail himself of this additional bite at the apple?” Justice Thomas asked. Justice Ginsburg responded that the decision was unlikely to prompt “any litigation flood or even rainfall.” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/us/08scotus.html?_r=1&src=twrhp