Page 188 - Privacy in a Cyber Age Policy and Practice

176 PRIVACY IN A CYBER AGE

trial. Forensic DNA usage offers a particularly valuable tool with which to
pursue such a right.
Had forensic DNA testing been readily available, law enforcement offi-
cials could have quickly excluded Womack and others from suspicion,
sparing him decades of harassment and allowing them to focus attention
on finding the killer. In fact, had a database of offenders’ DNA samples
existed at the time, police would have been able to match the evidentiary
DNA recovered from the victim’s body to Barrett quite quickly. Paul
Ferrera, director of the Virginia Division of Forensic Science, found that
the Virginia laboratory “typically and routinely eliminate[d] approximately
25 percent to 30 percent of the suspects who the police have centered on in
their investigation using our DNA analysis.” 124
Whether one considers the right to be cleared of being a suspect as
quickly as possible a new right or merely part of the right to a speedy and
impartial trial, DNA usages are particularly effective at honoring this right.

3. Exonerating the Innocent Convicted, and
Preventing Miscarriages of Justice

Forensic DNA usages have also exonerated a considerable number of
individuals who have been falsely convicted of crimes. Most recently, in July
2014, “DNA evidence exonerate[d] a man who spent 26 years in prison in
the 1982 killing of a Washington woman.” 125 As of 2014, post-conviction
DNA testing had exonerated 317 individuals nationwide, including 18
prisoners on death row. 126 On average, those who are exonerated through
DNA analysis spend thirteen years in prison before their innocence is
established. 127 Given the strong moral commitment to avoid jailing, let
alone executing innocent people—captured in the oft-cited dictate that it is
better to let a hundred criminals go free than to imprison one innocent—it
is clear that the greatest merit of DNA usages is their ability to advance
rights in addition to the common good. Beyond the moral perspective,
it is clearly in the interests of the criminal justice system and the public
to avoid the large payouts that tend to follow the overturning of wrong-
ful convictions, as with the 41-millin-dollar settlement in July 2014 for
five men jailed in connection with a 1989 rape and assault in New York
City, 128 or the 40-million-dollar settlement in June 2014 for a similar case
in Chicago. 129
Some critics argue that offenders lack sufficient access to the DNA
evidence against them post-conviction, which makes it difficult to retest
suspect evidence and obtain exonerations where appropriate. Intense
debate revolves around the conditions under which convicted offenders