Former FBI Director William Sessions recent­ly called on pros­e­cu­tors and law enforce­ment offi­cials to sup­port broad­er access to DNA test­ing to address grow­ing con­cerns about inno­cence. Sessions’ com­ments in an op-ed in The Washington Post came just weeks after Kirk Bloodsworth, the nation’s first death row inmate to be freed based on DNA test­ing, was informed that Baltimore County author­i­ties had genet­i­cal­ly linked anoth­er sus­pect to the crime using DNA evi­dence. Sessions stated:

[W]ith 137 post-con­vic­tion DNA exon­er­a­tions now on the books in the United States, I am increas­ing­ly con­cerned about recent news sto­ries that sug­gest a grow­ing resis­tance on the part of pros­e­cu­tors across the coun­try to allow post-con­vic­tion DNA test­ing, even in cas­es where there is strong evi­dence of inno­cence.

The Bloodsworth case vivid­ly demon­strates the need for law enforce­ment offi­cials to join advo­cates for the inno­cent in seek­ing DNA test­ing where it pre­vi­ous­ly was unavail­able. The phe­nom­e­nal sci­en­tif­ic poten­tial of this evi­dence should be cham­pi­oned by law enforce­ment offi­cials, whose prin­ci­pal inter­est has always been to pro­tect the inno­cent as they try to appre­hend the guilty.

(Washington Post, September 21, 2003) See Innocence.

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