DNA Testing Death Penalty Inmates

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Recommended: Eyewitness testimony is both fundamentally unreliable and over-relied upon

DNA Testing on Death Penalty Inmates Inmates on death row don’t have many excuses not to be executed after their sentence, but there is one thing that has provided a second chance for the innocent. DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) testing is a method used to identify the unique genetic code of human beings; no two codes are alike. DNA testing for inmates on death row is an advancement that has proven the innocence of many resulting in their life being saved. Another positive includes a foolproof way of proving innocence and it also shows where our justice system fails and is proved wrong in certain occasions. There are more positives than just the three listed above, but these are the most important of them all. The lives of the inmates on death row have been greatly influenced by the advancement in technology, which ultimately saved their lives and gets them exonerated from prison almost immediately.The American Civil Liberties Union states "In the U.S., as of September 2011, 273 people, including 17 death row inmates, have been exonerated by use of DNA tests" (“DNA”). These inmates either falsely admitted to a crime that they did not commit or they might have been misidentified by witnesses. Eyewitness misidentification is the greatest cause of inaccurate convictions nationwide. This has …show more content…

Washington was misled by authorities and was sentenced to death. He served 16 years in jail (14 of them being on death row) before he was exonerated due to DNA testing (“DNA”). John Norman Huffington was in prison for nearly 32 years. His conviction then was then put to an end after DNA testing showed that the hair they found at the crime scene wasn’t a match to his (“OP-ED”). Another case was about Willie Jerome Manning. He was hours from death when his lawyers won a case to try and exonerate him so they could do DNA testing

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