AG Questions Necessity Of DNA Law

Vermont's Attorney General and a key state lawmaker are squaring off over a proposal that would mandate preservation of DNA evidence in case it could later be used to clear innocent people wrongfully convicted of serious crimes.

Key lawmakers say the DNA Innocence law has been enacted in other states where innocent people were wrongfully convicted and then cleared years later by DNA evidence that was often suppressed by the police, prosecutors, and even judges.

Attorney General Bill Sorrell says that law may be needed in other states, but not in Vermont.

"This is a solution in search of a problem," said Sorrell, who believes the DNA proposal that would permanently preserve DNA evidence collected in serious crimes like rape, kidnapping, and murder is unnecessary.

"I don't want to see innocent people convicted," said Sorrell, who acknowledges that in other states innocent people have been convicted and cleared years later by DNA that was suppressed by authorities.

But he says it can't happen in Vermont, because police and prosecutors must share all evidence with defendants before trial and the record shows that about 95% of people charged with crimes of all types, even murder, end up pleading guilty. So claims of innocence are rare in Vermont.

I'm disappointed to hear the Attorney General comment that way about a senate bill that was a priority for the senate judiciary committee," said Senator Dick Sears, Chair of Judiciary Committee that drafted and strongly supports the DNA innocence proposal. He says Sorrell obviously forgot about the case of former Burlington cop Paul Lawrence, who framed more than 70 innocent people for drug dealing in the seventies and eighties.

"And if somebody's locked up for 20 years for a crime they didn't commit, and can prove their innocence, they deserve to be out, but so that also means the guilty party is not in," said Sears.

In response, Attorney General Sorrell says that the Paul Lawrence drug-frame scandal supports his criticism of the proposed DNA innocence law. Sorrell points out that it was other police officers who caught Lawrence. He was convicted, imprisoned, and every one of the framed innocents, more than 70 of them, was pardoned. Sorrell says the Lawrence case proves the system worked to protect the innocent just as designed, and a DNA innocence law would be unnecessary in Vermont.