Congressman Jerrold Nadler (NY-08), chair of the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, today voiced his strong disagreement with the United States Supreme Court decision holding that criminal defendants have no constitutional right to obtain access to DNA evidence held by the State. Today’s 5-4 ruling came in the case of William Osborne, an Alaskan convicted of rape and assault in 1993. Nadler released the following statement:

“Today’s Supreme Court decision violates our fundamental notion of fairness and due process of the law. To me, it is common sense that a defendant should have the constitutional right to conduct a test that would establish conclusively whether he is guilty or innocent of an alleged crime. Justice Stevens himself opined that the Court was endorsing the state’s ‘arbitrary denial’ of evidence in rejecting this right. The convicted may in fact be guilty of these heinous crimes and would, therefore, deserve to be punished to the full extent of the law. But, if there is a chance that he is innocent, then he should at least be able to finally test that possibility.

“DNA evidence in particular has already become widely accepted in law enforcement as a reliable method of extracting unambiguous information. Just today, Congress itself further recognized the importance of DNA testing in approving my amendment to increase funding for DNA analysis. I will be reviewing this issue carefully to see what can be done to ensure that we can simultaneously provide due process to the accused and give our law enforcement officials all of the necessary tools to fight crime.”