In the News
DNA tests on inmates sometimes proved they were guilty
Publication date: April 6, 2009
Source: Kansas City Star
Author: Laura Bauer
The Kansas City Star quoted Jean Phillips, clinical associate professor and director of the Defender Project, in a story about DNA testing proving an inmate guilty. The story also quotes KU Law graduates Charles Branson, L'96, who is the Douglas County district attorney, and Miguel L'Heureux, L'05.
The Star wrote:
Phillips has counseled KU students who handled cases where tests didn't exonerate the inmate.
"I tell them, you shouldn't feel bad," Phillips said. "You should feel good, because the criminal justice system got it right and ultimately, isn't that what we all want?"
...
Miguel L'Heureux, a KU graduate, worked under Phillips' supervision at the Defender Project in 2004. During his second year of law school he investigated the case of Kansas vs. Oliver Smith.
Smith was convicted in 1989 of raping and killing a woman whose husband he knew. The case included some of the first DNA testing for the state of Kansas.
But the DNA available at the time wasn't nearly as advanced as it is now, and Smith insisted he was innocent. L'Heureux and the Defender Project were able to persuade a judge to allow evidence to be retested.
"We really thought we had a good case," said L'Heureux, who worked hundreds of hours on the case. "It was something we believed in. … I had come to believe he (Smith) was wrongly convicted."
In 2007, the test results came back.
Smith couldn't be excluded. And L'Heureux, now a practicing attorney in the Chicago area, still remembers that "sinking feeling in my gut."
"Why would someone push for DNA testing when they're guilty?" L'Heureux asked. "I don't really know the answer to that.
"Perhaps when you're facing a lifetime of prison, you come to terms with that by creating a new reality.
"You make yourself innocent."
