In Other Criminal Justice News...

...the U.S. Supreme Court, using a smattering of legal reasoning and a heaping helping of common sense, lowered the burden that convicted criminal must meet to obtain a new trial as a result of DNA evidence that may cast doubt on the original conviction.

The case stemmed from the conviction of Paul Gregory House for a murder committed 20 years ago in the course of a rape in rural Tennessee. The DNA evidence produced after the conviction raised a serious question about House's involvement in the rape and thus about both the motive for the murder and the commission of the murder itself.

House sought a new trial. A U.S. District Court denied a hearing to House, however, saying that House had not demonstrated, as required under previous rulings, that the situation probably resulted in the "conviction of one who is actually innocent."

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the court, said the lower court had placed too great a burden on the defendant. The court's function, he wrote, "is not to make an independent factual determination about what likely occurred, but rather to assess the likely impact of the evidence on reasonable jurors."

Rather than requiring "absolute certainty" of innocence, Kennedy wrote, House only needed to "demonstrate that more likely than not, in light of the new evidence, no reasonable juror would find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt."

The lower burden may not seem at first to be significantly different, but it is. It is much more difficult for the convict to establish that he is actually innocent, than to merely cast doubt on his own conviction. And this ruling also takes the weight of consideration out of the hands of the reviewing court. Instead, the court must determine what a juror would think of the potentially exonerating evidence, and given that the juror may only vote for a conviction when there is proof beyond a reasonable doubt, nearly any credible evidence that may cast a significant shadow of doubt on a conviction may potentially result in a new trial. Which is as it should be, especially in cases where the convict faces the death penalty.

Chief Justice Roberts, displaying his conservative chops, would preserve the old burden:

"The question," Roberts wrote, "is not whether House was prejudiced at his trial because the jurors were not aware of the new evidence, but whether all the evidence, considered together, proves that House was actually innocent, so that no reasonable juror would vote to convict him. Considering all the evidence, and giving due regard to the District Court's findings on whether House's new evidence was reliable, I do not find it probable that no reasonable juror would vote to convict him. . . . "

There is something to be said for judicial economy, and the finality of criminal conviction. We're all aware that it is frequently a decade or more before a defendant convicted of a capital crime and sentenced to death is actually executed. And yet even if you support the death penalty, it seems impossible to me to argue that a potentially innocent convict should not be given a chance to prove his innocence at a new trial when new DNA evidence is presented. To deny them such an opportunity when their life is on the line, is the epitome of injustice, and no interest in judicial economy, finality and efficiency can possibly outweigh the interest we should have in preserving the lives of innocent men and women.