The state Supreme Court will consider eliminating a deadline
altogether for inmates who want to challenge their
convictions.
By CHRIS TISCH, Times Staff
Writer Published September 29, 2005
The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday extended the opportunity
for Florida's prison inmates to challenge their convictions through
DNA testing.
The extension came just two days before a deadline could have
barred courts from hearing requests from inmates trying to prove
their innocence through DNA testing. The court extended the deadline
until July 1.
Meanwhile, the court will consider whether to eliminate the
deadline altogether, which the Florida Bar Association recommended
in a petition filed last week.
"People have realized that you can't really put a limit on
innocence," said George Tragos, a Clearwater attorney who is
chairman of the bar's criminal procedure rules committee. "Why would
anyone want to keep an innocent man in jail just because he missed a
deadline?"
The issue of eliminating the deadline also will be taken up in a
Senate bill, said Michelle Fontaine, assistant director of the
Florida Innocence Initiative in Tallahassee.
"We have always wanted there to be unfettered time for
individuals to file these claims," Fontaine said. "The deadline
serves no purpose."
The Florida Legislature in 2001 gave prison inmates two years to
ask that evidence in their cases be tested for DNA. Many of the
inmates were convicted of crimes that occurred years before DNA
became a common tool in crime-solving.
Defense attorneys suggested it wasn't enough time. What if
innocent inmates didn't learn about the opportunity for DNA testing
until it was too late? What if the requests for testing were
backlogged at a lab?
The Supreme Court extended the deadline by two years despite
opposition from critics who said it would cost too much to store
evidence, would clog state labs with unnecessary requests and would
deny finality to victims' family members.
Since then, DNA testing has helped to exonerate two men of crimes
they didn't commit.
Last year, Wilton Dedge was released from a Florida prison after
DNA testing exonerated him of rape. Dedge had served 22 years in
prison for a crime he didn't commit.
In August, Luis Diaz walked out of a Florida prison after DNA
testing helped exonerate him of several south Florida rapes. Diaz
was behind bars for 26 years.
Two days after Diaz was released, Gov. Jeb Bush signed an
executive order requiring prosecutors to preserve physical evidence
so it could be tested by state prisoners. The order was a reprieve
to inmates because it prohibited prosecutors from throwing away
evidence, which they could have done beginning Oct. 1.
Fontaine, whose office receives about 25 requests for DNA testing
a week, said opposition to eliminating the deadline has dissolved in
the last two years, primarily because of the Dedge and Diaz
exonerations, which received widespread media coverage.
"There's a human face to it this time around," Fontaine said. "I
think the climate has changed and I don't know that there's going to
be any opposition to this right now."
Fontaine said more Florida exonerations may be announced in the
next month. Nationwide, about 160 prison inmates have been
exonerated by DNA testing.
"It's never made any sense to me to have a deadline," said Martin
McClain, who is known for his work defending Florida inmates on
death row. "It seems to me if the person is innocent, that's more
important than any issue of finality."
McClain won't get an argument from the Pinellas-Pasco State
Attorney's Office.
"If someone is innocent and DNA will show that, then we want that
testing to be done," said Doug Crow, an executive assistant state
attorney. "We don't want anyone to be wrongly convicted or wrongly
incarcerated.
"I think that's one of the greatest advantages of DNA testing. It
not only can incriminate people, it can exonerate them as well,"
Crow said. "It's very powerful in doing both."
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