From yesterday’s Second Circuit access to DNA testing decision:
Today, with the advance of forensic DNA technology, our desire to join Learned Hand’s optimism has given way to the reality of wrongful convictions — a reality which challenges us to reaffirm our commitment to the principle that the innocent should be freed.[fn3]
[fn3] See, e.g., In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 372 (1970) (Harlan, J., concurring) (“[I]t is far worse to convict an innocent man than to let a guilty man go free.”); WILLIAM BLACKSTONE, 4 COMMENTARIES *352 (“[B]etter that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.”); see generally Alexander Volokh, n Guilty Men, 146 U. PA. L. REV. 173 (1997). Notably, DNA testing — with its capacity to “exonerat[e] defendants (or those wrongly convicted) to a practical certainty,” Harvey II, 285 F.3d at 305 n.1 (Luttig, J., respecting the denial of rehearing en banc), and to identify the guilty — promises to render, in some cases, both sides of Blackstone’s maxim.
I haven’t read the opinion, and thus can’t say whether I endorse its reasoning. But I fully endorse the practice of citing to the Volokh brothers whenever possible.