Even Texas’ Conservative AG Supports Required DNA Testing In Capital Cases

Even in death row cases, criminal defendants have no right to test potentially exonerating DNA evidence. In a move to prevent wrongful convictions in the state with the highest number of both executions and DNA exonerations, a Texas legislator is proposing a measure to require prosecutors to test available DNA evidence before seeking the death penalty. The bill’s chances of success were significantly bolstered with the unlikely support of one of the state’s most prominent and conservative legal figures: Attorney General Greg Abbott. The Dallas Observer’s Eric Nicholson reports on the move, in an aptly titled post, “Greg Abbott Backs DNA-Testing Bill, Continues Unprecedented Streak of Reasonableness”:

“There’s no reason to test these items more than a decade after the crime was committed,” Abbott said Tuesday at a news conference alongside the bill’s author, Rodney Ellis, a Houston Democrat. “We shouldn’t live with suspense. The family of the victim shouldn’t have to through this time after time after time in order to get certainty.”

Abbott is careful to frame his support for Ellis’ bill mainly as an effort to help victims’ families, but it comes, of course, in the wake of an embarrassingly high number of overturned convictions. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, 53 prisoners have been freed by DNA evidence, two of whom were serving on death row.

Nicholson points out that Abbott may also support the bill as a means of strengthening support for the death penalty, which Ellis also supports. There are ever-growing reasons to believe that the death penalty is not a good idea in any case. But Texas, home to one-third of the entire country’s executions, should at the very least test defendants’ DNA before seeking to take their lives. And they should do more. Earlier this month, the chief justice of the state’s supreme court once again called for a commission to investigate all wrongful convictions, many with defendants who could have benefited from DNA testing whether or not they faced the death penalty, and many more in which DNA evidence was never available to begin with.

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Steroids And Major League Baseball: Is More Testing The Answer?

The Miami New Times published a bombshell investigative piece this morning that tied multiple Major League Baseball players, including New York Yankees star Alex Rodriguez, to a Miami drug company that was supplying them with anabolic steroids, human growth hormone, and other performance enhancing drugs. The story of Biogenesis, the drug firm, and Rodriguez, who admitted to steroid use before, brought back an ugly issue baseball thought it had largely put behind it when it instituted strong drug testing and harsh penalties in 2004.

The response, of course, has been an immediate call for more testing and harsher penalties. But here’s a question few seem to be asking: do drug tests and harsh penalties deter drug use? And if they don’t, how will more drug tests and even harsher penalties do any better?

In baseball, that’s impossible to know definitively, since there are no before-and-after testing numbers. But academic research suggests that random drug testing probably doesn’t prevent drug use. Dr. Linn Goldberg testified during a House Oversight Committee last month that his two-year testing of high school athletes had no deterrent effect. Other academic research has found that “testing alone is not a sufficient deterrent to eliminate drug use among college athletes.” Research into random testing for drugs like marijuana, meanwhile, has found little proof that such testing prevents use.

If Rodriguez, who had already admitted to steroid use once, indeed used performance enhancing drugs again, drug testing and the threat of penalties and public shame obviously failed as a deterrent. Random tests and the threat of rescinded titles, a lifetime ban, and federal punishment didn’t stop Lance Armstrong, and harsh rules and penalties in professional cycling and the Olympics haven’t prevented numerous athletes from using performance enhancers.

It’s easy to suggest that drug testing acts as a deterrent and that more of it would prevent even more use, but it’s hard to find proof of how effective drug tests are at actually preventing use. I’m not sure what the solution to sports’ drug problem is. I’m not even sure there is one, especially if the technology and funding that goes into producing performance enhancing drugs continues to outpace the technology and funding that goes into testing for them. But before we rush to the intuitive “more testing, harsher penalties” solution, shouldn’t we first figure out if the testing that is being conducted now does any good?

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Testing the Media testicular fortitude

According to America's top constitutional law Professor turned President of the United States, the Supreme Court overturning "a law that by a large majority of a democratically elected Congress was adopted."

What about the people, acting through the democratic process, to change their own Constitution?

I ask because in California, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled it unconstitutional for the people of California to ban of gay marriage to their Constitution. Most damning, the Ninth Circuit opinion pretty clear says that when judges Act and the people choose to change their Constitution in response, such an amendment is unconstitutional.

Will someone in the media ask the President if, based on its logic on the Supreme Court, he supports the voters in California who wanted to pass Proposition 8?

"No, no," he would try to pull back. "I'm talking about when the Supreme Court is trying to curb rights."

Wherefore, believes President Government-funded health care is a right?

It also supports President the legislatures of the several States voter ID laws by a democratically elected legislature enacting?

But wait ... There are more questions the media must keep if we go the President everyone responsible for their words and not just the Republicans.

Believes the President should overturn Roe v. Wade that the Supreme Court when the law a law adopted by a large majority in a democratically elected state legislature declared unconstitutional?

Hey, what about the immigration laws in Arizona and Alabama?

"I said ' Congress '," could the President answer.

Okay. Well in the United States the partial birth abortion ban 2003 Congress law of 2003 by a greater margin that the previous Congress Obamacare and that the majority was bipartisan.

Does the President now that the Supreme Court was right to maintain the constitutionality of "a law which has been adopted by a large majority of a democratically elected Congress"? If so, the President withdraw his statement of 2007 now where he attacked the Supreme Court for enforcement of "a law that was passed by a large majority of a democratically elected Congress"?

Some Member States of the media certainly has the testicular fortitude to ask only the latter.

But then again, what of Proposition 8? The President believes that the courts must listen to the will of the people?

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