EDITORIALS

Something’s amiss

Why not allow this DNA test?

TWO PLUS two is not adding up to four. The equation seems simple enough, but there must be a part missing. Is there another sheet to this test that we didn’t get?

Something is going on in beautiful, mountainous Carroll County-specifically in the prosecuting attorney’s office-that doesn’t make sense. Could somebody please explain how allowing a DNA test for a Belynda Goff could hurt?

Yes, Gentle Reader, Belynda Goff is in the news again. Just not as much as she was in 1996 when she was convicted of bludgeoning her husband to death.

All those years ago, when she was charged with the crime (after failing a lie-detector test) she refused a plea deal with prosecutors, saying she couldn’t admit to something she didn’t do. Instead she put her fate in the hands of a jury. And was convicted. Now Belynda Goff is serving a life sentence.

She’s always maintained her innocence. And no murder weapon has ever been found. But she’s been behind bars since 1996.

Now comes an outfit called the Innocence Project, a national group out to free folks it thinks have been put in jail unjustly-or at least get their cases a second look.

You know how it works: The group warns against eyewitness misidentification in trials, the problems with false confessions, and then pushes for compensation for those who are freed after wrongful convictions. It would seem a more than worthy cause. Seeking justice always is.

The people at the Innocence Project want to test some of the evidence at the crime scene in Belynda Goff’s case to see if somebody else could have been the killer. They’ve even volunteered to pay for the DNA tests.

The prosecuting attorney in Carroll County says no.

Huh?

Prosecutors in Carroll County aren’t talking to the paper. But in a response to a legal motion filed by the Innocence Project, they say the courts should deny DNA testing. (And here’s where Huh? turns into What the-?)

The prosecutors tell the court that the law allowing DNA testing after convictions (1) violates the state’s constitution, which guarantees the separation of powers, because (2) asking for a DNA test is pert-near a request for clemency, and (3) granting clemency is the governor’s domain, not the courts’.

The folks running the Innocence Project seem as baffled as . . . everybody else.

“We’re not asking the judge to grant Ms. Goff clemency,” said Karen Thompson of the Innocence Project. “We’re asking for testing.”

And asking nicely.

Here’s another way to put it. It came from Laurent Sacharoff, an assistant professor of law at U of A: “In some jurisdictions, prosecutors have a kneejerk reaction of just fighting, without considering sufficiently the merits that the person might actually be innocent . . . .”

There may be something to that. It could even be the case in Carroll County. Hard to tell. But, again, the prosecutors aren’t talking on the record.

Our first impression-and it may be widely shared-is that the prosecutors in this case are using a technicality to keep a do-gooder outfit like the Innocence Project from paying for a DNA test that might, just might, cast more light on this case.

Talk to any reporter who’s covered the legal system for a number of years, and he or she will tell you about gungho prosecutors who are more interested in getting convictions than in getting at the truth. And will do what it takes to get those convictions, and to make them stick on appeal.

If the prosecutors in Carroll County don’t want to be lumped in with that unsavory group, then they should answer this one question about doing some DNA tests in the case of Belynda Goff:

How could it hurt?

Editorial, Pages 14 on 01/14/2014

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