By Judge Greg Mathis

Twenty years ago, Alan Newton was convicted of rape, robbery and assault. For 22 years, he maintained his innocence and, as a result, was denied parole. For nearly 12 years, Newton fought for DNA testing, certain it would clear his name. It did. And now Alan Newton is free. But he’s lost 22 years of his life – years that he can never get back. While the government can’t make up for Newton’s lost time, it can do right by the thousands of men and women who have, for years, been rotting in cells around this country, holding on to their innocence. The criminal justice system must ensure that DNA testing be made available to defendants in older cases. There are sure to be many more Alan Newton’s out there; they deserve a chance to be heard.

DNA testing is a powerful tool that can be used to exonerate or convict accused criminals. A fairly new phenomenon, DNA wasn’t widely used when Alan Newton was convicted. Years after his conviction, when testing became more popular, Newton had to literally fight the New York City police department to locate the evidence from the crime scene. Because so much time had passed or, perhaps they didn’t want to find it, the department had a hard time locating the evidence (turns out it was sitting in its original vault). Across the country, there are thousands of defendants, convicted 20 or so years ago, fighting – just like Alan Newton – for DNA testing in their cases. The courts, in the interest of true justice, should see to it that those requests be honored in a timely manner.

Far more often than our criminal justice system would like to admit, innocent people are falsely accused and wrongfully convicted for crimes they did not commit Yet many, including Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, would argue that the number of false convictions in the nation’s courts is insignificant when compared to the number of times the system gets it right. But these mistakes cost the country in more ways than one: tax dollars are spent to bring the wrong person to trial, while a criminal is left free to walk the streets, threatening our safety. Two years ago, the University of Michigan examined more than 300 criminal cases, using 1989, the year of the first DNA exoneration, as a starting point. In more than half of the cases, the defendants had been in prison for more than 10 years and, in all cases, DNA was used to free the defendant.  Researchers said that the data suggests there are thousands of innocent people sitting in our nation’s prisons.

DNA testing is not a perfect science. Much is left up to forces that can’t be controlled. However, with more and more people being exonerated by the testing, the criminal justice system should make it a priority to use the technology, whenever possible, in older cases. If someone was falsely convicted, the truth needs to be brought to light immediately. Like Alan Newton, those wrongfully accused men and women can never get the lost years back. But, by quickly providing access to testing, the system can ensure that more time won’t be lost.

Editor’s note: Judge Greg Mathis is national vice president of Rainbow PUSH and a national board member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.