Legislation that would extend the filing date for convicted felons to apply for post-conviction DNA testing headed to the Senate floor Monday.
If passed, Senate File 101, would close a loophole in the current statute that was passed by the Legislature in 2008.
As written, the law does now allow the court to order DNA testing for trials or convictions after Jan. 1, 2000. The amended law would move that date to July 1, 2008, when the legislation took effect.
The proposed law was introduced by Sen. Bill Landen, R, Casper, who said it builds on access to justice legislation enacted by many states at the time on urging from the Rocky Mountain Innocence Center that advocated for criminal justice reforms to reverse wrongful convictions.
Landen said the law requires convicted felons meet rigorous standards to access untested DNA evidence. This includes providing a factual basis for why DNA evidence is material to the conviction and that counsel was ineffective in requesting that testing be done prior to trial, among other considerations.
Though the initial legislation was good, Landen said it also had unintended consequences for locking out access to those people who were convicted prior to 2008.
Closing this loophole would provide access to those like Eddie Magallanes, who was tried and found guilty of first-degree murder in the shooting death of Joseph Lopez in 2006.
Emily Madden, Casper-based attorney and commissioner of the Wyoming State Bar for the Seventh Judicial District, told the Senate Judiciary Committee she first learned about the legislation after being appointed by U.S. District Judge Alan Johnson to represent Magallanes in his pursuit for post-conviction DNA testing.
Magallanes was convicted at age 24 and is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
Despite his conviction, Madden said that Magallanes maintains his innocence and that he wasn’t in Wyoming the night of the shooting but was rather at home in North Platte, Nebraska. DNA collected at the scene could have, and still could, prove his innocence if tested, Madden said.
Magallanes meets all the standards to access the untested DNA, she said, with the exception of his conviction date falling outside of the current timeframe.
Better Technology
Attorney and University of Wyoming law professor Lauren McLane spoke about advancement in DNA testing. Prior to moving to Wyoming, McLane had previously been a DNA attorney for many years.
One of her specialties, she told the committee, is forensic science, including teaching classes at UW.
She said that technology has improved dramatically since the 1980s, including restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP), allowing for advanced testing on smaller samples at a fraction of the time and cost.
“The funny thing about RFLP is it took months — some weeks, months — to actually process DNA ,” she said. “Now today, at DCI (Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation) and the crime lab, it takes a few hours.”
McLane also noted that smaller and degraded samples that previously were untestable are now able to be processed.
“We didn't need as much sample size, and we could distinguish profiles much better,” she said. “We're even more capable of doing so today with the technology that we have.”
At What Cost?
Sen. John Kolb, R, Rock Springs, questioned the cost of extending access for post-conviction DNA testing to which Madden said it would be negligible when compared to the high “moral cost,” as well as the fiscal cost of long-term incarceration of wrongly accused people.
“When you are talking about incarcerating people for decades or for life imprisonment, and they are people who have the hallmarks of wrongful convictions with the need to access this type of DNA evidence for the purpose of presenting claims of factual innocence, it would save the state money if those people who were wrongfully convicted could access that with the relative cost of DNA testing being inexpensive,” Madden said.
Neither Madden nor Landen could provide the cost of housing an inmate per year or how much it costs to test DNA, so the committee tabled the discussion until the next reading of the bill when those costs would be provided.
Madden further noted that if the law is enacted, she doubted it would “open the floodgates to other petitioners.”
Other than the presenters, there was no public comment or discussion about the proposed law.
Contact Jen Kocher at jen@cowboystatedaily.com
Jen Kocher can be reached at jen@cowboystatedaily.com.
