Monday, September 20, 2004

I hate that I am like this (stereotyping), but frankly, I am not surprised that it is a Republican senator from Alabama who is trying to hold up the DNA testing legislation that is currently before the Senate. Senator Sessions seems to think that testing the backlog of DNA in our nation's crime labs is not worth the money. I wonder how much money it would be worth to him to concretely exonerate someone who was serving time for a crime they didn't commit? How much would it be worth to exonerate a death row inmate who did not commit the murder for which he is held? My guess is that it wouldn't be worth much to Sessions. He strikes me as the kind of death penalty advocate who believes that even if an inmate didn't commit the murder for which they were convicted, they probably did something somewhere else and it'll be no big loss to kill them. Heck, why should the taxpayers pay to free someone like that? Nevermind the fact that our justice system does not work effectively when a key piece of lab work is backlogged. How does a defendant get a speedy trial when the DNA is backed up? ahhhh the Constitution...how could I forget?

Forgive the sarcasm...this is a tiring job sometimes.

Billions to test DNA snagged

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