Looking at the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling denying that prisoners have a constitutional right to potentially exculpatory DNA evidence after they've been convicted, Matt Yglesias makes an important point about conservative jurisprudence:
Obviously, the purpose of the established system of criminal justice is to use punishment of the guilty as a means of controlling crime. The general hostility of most people in the law enforcement and prosecutorial universe to exonerating evidence is a little bit hard to understand. The predominant thinking of Alaska in this case seems to be that the punishment of the innocent works as a close substitute for the punishment of the guilty, so that given the heinous nature of the crime the state has a strong interest in convicting someone or other of it irrespective of the facts.Sadly, this approach to the law, where punishing someone is as good as punishing the guilty if judges arbitrarily feel that reconsidering potentially exculpatory evidence could "overthrow the established system of justice," is likely to influence the results of Troy Davis' June 25 appeal to the Supreme Court. Davis' appeals have been rejected time and time again despite the fact that there is no physical evidence linking him to the murder of police officer Mark McPhail and 7 of the 9 original witnesses have recanted with several saying they felt coerced by police. Several have also identified one of the remaining two witnesses as the real perpetrator.
It may seem strange, but in a larger sense, yesterday's ruling affects a smaller number of people than it might seem at first. Most state governments are more humane than our current court, and 47 have laws granting prisoners the right to seek DNA testing in at least some cases. It's states like Alaska, which has no such laws, where incarcerated people seeking potentially exculpatory DNA evidence will be left high and dry without a better federal standard. The Supreme Court basically just invited Congress to establish one.
-- A. Serwer
