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Advocate: Changes in DNA bill 'untenable'

By ALEX LEARY
Published April 6, 2006

TALLAHASSEE - Jenny Greenberg had just emerged from the committee room when her cell phone rang. "Congratulations," a friend said. "You're out of the House."

Greenberg, director of the Florida Innocence Initiative, had spent months promoting a bill that broadens criminal suspects' access to DNA evidence. The State Administration Council's unanimous vote last week should have left her elated.

Instead, she felt sick.

During its last stop in committee, HB 61 was significantly changed, unbeknownst to many on the panel. The alterations, Greenberg said, pose serious challenges to justice.

"The backhanded dismantling of rights that have never been controversial is really untenable," Greenberg said Wednesday.

The crux of the controversy lies in a paragraph spelling out who is eligible to petition for an examination of DNA evidence. The bill used to allow a person to petition the court for an examination of physical evidence that would "exonerate that person or mitigate the sentence that person received."

In the revision, everything after or was deleted.

Greenberg said the changes could hurt suspects in a murder case who, while present at the time of the crime and therefore eligible for a felony murder charge, did not pull the trigger. DNA evidence could be used to mitigate their sentence from the death penalty to life in prison.

She realizes there may be little public sympathy for the accused in such a case but maintains justice is paramount.

"Isn't that un-American, being sentenced for something you didn't do?" said Sen. Alex Villalobos, who is sponsoring what had been identical DNA legislation in the Senate.

Greenberg is also concerned about an insertion stating that after July 1 - the date the bill would go into effect - anyone who pleads guilty to a crime would be given opportunity for a DNA review but could not raise the issuelater, provided no new evidence arose.

The problem, Greenberg said, is defendants might not understand what is at stake and as past cases have shown, could have ineffective legal counsel. So how did a bill that met no formal objection before last Wednesday's meeting suddenly come unglued?

"We didn't have a lot of time to absorb the changes," said Rep. Ellyn Bogdanoff, R-Fort Lauderdale, one of the bill's sponsors. She said the committee's chairman, Rep. Don Brown, R-De Funiak Springs, expressed a desire for the July 1 provision but the other changes were a surprise.

Bogdanoff said she is working on amendments intended to fix the bill, which is poised for debate before the full House.

For his part, Brown said requiring any known DNA evidence to be tested at the time of sentencing would prevent misuse of the law down the road from people trying to delay with false claims. "We're saying if you know the evidence is available, test it."

[Last modified April 6, 2006, 01:58:09]