Effort seeks to allow more DNA testing

The sponsor of the original legislation wants more inmates to qualify for tests.
COLUMBUS (AP) -- Too many inmates were turned away from state-paid DNA testing under strict eligibility requirements, inmate advocates say. In two years of the program, one convict was exonerated through the testing; another was cleared because of privately paid tests and his own sleuthing.
Sen. David Goodman, whose bill to permanently extend the DNA testing program is up for a Senate vote today, released a statement Monday that if it passes, he would try for changes in the House to make more inmates qualify.
Of 307 convicts who applied over the two years, 220 were denied testing. Mostly, they couldn't meet the law's requirement that they prove a favorable DNA test would cause any reasonable jury to acquit the inmate.
Goodman, a Columbus-area Republican, sponsored the legislation that started the one-year DNA testing program in 2003. The law also allowed release if the results exonerated the inmate. It was extended one year and expired at the end of October. Fourteen applications resulted in state-paid DNA tests; 72 requests are pending, according to the state attorney general's office.
Men freed
Donte Booker's rape conviction was overturned last February when testing showed he did not match semen on the victim's clothing. Booker had been on parole for three years, having served 16 years of his sentence because he refused to admit the 1986 rape in Beachwood, near Cleveland.
Clarence Elkins was freed under the law last December based on DNA tests begun before it took effect. Earlier tests showed Elkins' DNA was a poor match to the man who raped and murdered his mother-in-law and raped his then-6-year-old niece in 1998.
Elkins then retrieved a cigarette butt from another inmate he suspected of the crime. Privately paid DNA tests showed the other man was a match.
Attorney General Jim Petro had the state crime lab duplicate the results, and urged Summit County prosecutors to release Elkins under the DNA law, two months before a scheduled court hearing. He had served seven years of a life sentence.
An average DNA test costs $1,000 to $1,500, but costs can skyrocket if tiny samples require more sophisticated testing or there are many pieces of evidence to test.
Petro agrees
Petro is in the odd spot of agreeing with the state public defender's office: Both support changing the law to require the inmate to show a high probability of acquittal, instead of showing a jury would acquit them.
A judge told Elkins that the jury standard would have kept him from getting state-paid testing under the law, his wife, Melinda Elkins, told a Senate committee in prepared testimony last week.
"This standard signals to judges that DNA testing should be granted only in rare cases, and set up too many obstacles for families and inmates to navigate in order to achieve justice," she said.
Wants amendment
Goodman, concerned about the Elkins case, is looking to amend the bill in the House, he said in a statement. Senate President Bill Harris has said he supports making the program permanent, and House Speaker Jon Husted said he must study it. Harris wasn't aware of any attempts to change the standards, spokeswoman Maggie Ostrowski said.
Prosecutors support the bill but wouldn't like making it easier to get tests, said John Murphy, executive director of the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association.
"We would not support lowering the standard in that way," Murphy said. "We shouldn't be changing it because of somebody's view of one case."
The Elkins case was unusual because the quality of the DNA samples was so poor, Murphy said. Before Elkins found another suspect whose DNA matched -- which the law doesn't cover -- the test indicating Elkins wasn't the perpetrator wasn't as clear as most DNA tests, Murphy said. On its own, that might not have swayed a jury.