Testimony before Senate Judiciary Committee calls for improvement in forensic programs

Peter Neufeld told members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday that the federal government has purposefully stripped a forsenic law of its meaning by not funding DNA testing or implementing oversight of crime labs. Three men exonerated by DNA testing echoed Neufeld’s statements.

"It's fear," Anderson, of Hanover, Va., said of the bureaucratic resistance to clearing the way for such analyses. DNA evidence exonerated Anderson in 2001 of a rape conviction, after he was sentenced to 210 years in prison and served 15. "No one wants to admit a mistake has been made."

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy said he will grill the new attorney general next week on why some $14 million Congress has set aside for those analyses has not been spent.

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. (Associated Press, 01/23/08)

Read more about yesterday’s testimony, and download the Department of Justice Inspector General’s report – issued last week – on major shortcomings in forensic oversight

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