Jeffrey Deskovic had been con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to life in prison in 1990 for the rape and mur­der of a high school class­mate in New York. He was freed from prison on September 20 after DNA evi­dence from the crime was matched with anoth­er man who also con­fessed to the mur­der. The oth­er man was already in prison for a mur­der in the same coun­ty.

The DNA evi­dence that did not match Deskovic was pre­sent­ed at his orig­i­nal tri­al. However, Deskovic had con­fessed to the crime to the police after six hours of ques­tion­ing, and the jury chose to believe the con­fes­sion over the sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence. The pros­e­cu­tion’s the­o­ry of the case was that the DNA from the vic­tim was the result of con­sen­su­al sex with anoth­er per­son, and hence was unre­lat­ed to the crime and Deskovic’s involve­ment.

Mr. Deskovic was freed after Barry Scheck from the Innocence Project approached the Westchester County District Attorney about the case and she agreed to run the evi­dence through a nation­al DNA data­bank. The Innocence Project report­ed that 184 peo­ple have been exon­er­at­ed through DNA evi­dence since 1989.

(N.Y. Times, Sept. 21, 2006). Mr. Deskovic was tried and con­vict­ed at a time when New York did not have the death penal­ty; oth­er­wise he might have been sen­tenced to death. Of the 123 peo­ple who have been exon­er­at­ed from death row since 1973, 14 were freed as a result of DNA test­ing. See Innocence.

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