Moving accountability back up the line
Yesterday the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals struck at least a partial blow against junk evidence; some have said junk science, but I hate to use the term "science" for something that has absolutely nothing to do with science. The Court held that evidence of a dog scent line up was not enough to establish guilt - which to me was not that difficult a decision.
If you told someone on the street that someone could be convicted based on a "scent lineup" that was conducted using evidence that was several years old most people would think you were kidding. The process was that something from the suspect and five others were put in cans, and the dog then went and smelled each can. He alerted on one can - the soon to be defendant - and that was it. The amazing thing is there was other physical evidence - bloody fingerprints and hair. None of that matched the defendant though, so the State had to go with the dog.
My question is how you get to a conviction in a case like this. To start with, no prosecutor should ever take such a case - especially when other evidence contradicts the dog scent. We are led to believe that the when a prosecutor oversteps his authority there are some checks in place. One is the judge, who failed to see anything wrong with such evidence. The other is a the jury - people who would never believe such evidence - unless it was presented by the State. Unfortunately, that is often enough. Imagine the reaction if a defendant tried to present such evidence to show someone else committed the offense - my guess is it wouldn't even be admitted.
I'm glad Mr. Winfrey has finally won, but it should have never gotten this far. He goes home, and everyone else goes about their normal lives. That has to change. We need to move accountability back - it starts with the police who use such evidence, and goes all the way through the judge and jury. Until we figure out a way to do that, there will be more cases like this; cases where we will sit around scratching our heads wondering how someone got convicted in the first place.
