December 28, 2007
New testing could exonerate a man who spent half his life on death row
By Jamal Thalji, St. Petersburg Times --
Since its birth in 1992, the Innocence Project has used DNA testing to exonerate and free 210 wrongfully convicted prisoners from death row. Now the nonprofit legal clinic has helped Samuel Jason Derrick, who has spent half his life on Florida's death row, win the right to have evidence in his 1988 murder conviction tested for DNA. Circuit Judge Stanley Mills granted the defense's motion for postconviction DNA testing just before Christmas. Derrick, his family and his lawyers hope the latest advances in forensic technology will exonerate the 40-year-old Moon Lake man in the 1987 murder of storekeeper Rama Sharma. "I'm just thankful that the truth is going to come to light," said Derrick's former wife, Cherie. A bloody remnant of a white T-shirt, a partially eaten hot dog, blood found under a picnic table and scrapings from the victim's fingernails will all be tested, the judge ordered Dec. 19. The defense's hope is that viable DNA can be recovered from the evidence that will implicate someone other than Derrick in the stabbing murder of Sharma.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
By Susan Spencer-Wendel, Palm Beach Post, WEST PALM BEACH
Exonerations using DNA evidence have topped 200 cases now, corroding confidence in the American criminal justice system.
Men and women imprisoned for crimes they did not commit, many of those sexual batteries. He-said-she-said cases debunked by science decades later.
Some men exonerated when they were set to be executed. Most men released from prison with a bag of belongings, some robbed of half their lives.
For every person who walks out the steel door comes a wave of prisoners insisting they, too, have DNA evidence that they want tested - post-conviction claims, they are called.
It's a trend so disturbing, Florida legislators recently passed a law requiring that all criminal defendants taking plea deals be asked beforehand if there exists any biological evidence that may exonerate them. It's the state's way of heading off a defendant's post-conviction claim before he even utters "guilty."
It's a way to spare the courts more cases and victims more agony.
In a recent sexual battery case against Esdras Cardona, though, no one had that chance.
The additional DNA testing that both Cardona and the devastated woman wanted never took place.
And for one of them, there would be a disastrous ending.