Funded by a $1.2 million federal grant and using the latest DNA technology, Colorado prosecutors hope to review as many as 5,000 rape, murder and manslaughter convictions in the next 18 months to determine whether any inmates currently in Colorado prisons were unjustly convicted.
Colorado Attorney General John Suthers and Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey said they, along with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and law students, will conduct a “systematic review” of cases where defendants may have been unjustly convicted, using DNA testing as a critical component in the review.
“We are going to systematically review the cases of people that are in custody. We will go back to a certain date and go back from there. But also if somebody writes us a letter, they can ask us to take a review of their case,” Morrissey said.
“It is going to be the person who says, ‘I got convicted and I’m innocent. I’m not the person that did this.’ Those are the individuals we are going to be looking for in this project,” Morrissey said.
Morrissey, Suthers and CBI Director Ron Sloan said that the program — called the Colorado Judicial Review Project — is a commitment by them to see justice done within the state.
“All the prosecutors I know in Colorado are seriously committed to justice. This is a technology that has come about in the last 20 years and has developed in such a way that it has become incredibly important in the system,” Suthers said.
Most of the cases reviewed will be those that went to trial before 1995, before DNA was used in Colorado criminal cases.
Not likely to be reviewed will be cases where the defendants pleaded guilty, cases where the defendants pleaded self-defense or cases where the defendant claimed the victim was involved in consensual sex, the prosecutors said.
Morrissey and Suthers said they hope to have the review completed in 18 months and further funding won’t be necessary.
Suthers said that in addition to working with the Denver district attorney’s office, he will work with several other organizations, including the University of Denver College of Law, the CBI and the Colorado Public Defender’s Office.
The organizations will help run the program and select which cases will be reviewed.
The prosecutors said they know of no inmates currently requesting DNA testing, but they expect requests to be made.
CBI Director Sloan said he was convinced Colorado should undertake such a program after attending a U.S. Justice Department symposium in January that focused on post-conviction DNA casework.
“If the wrong person has been convicted and incarcerated as a result of a case — either because of the lack of availability of biological evidence at the time or technology that just could not assess it — I think we have a compelling obligation to do that now,” Sloan said.
Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com
