As cutting-edge DNA technology changes the quest for justice in California and across the nation, two traditional legal enemies--Orange County's public defender and district attorney--are developing a plan to work together to investigate possible wrongful convictions.
Details about the unusual union are still being worked out, but officials hope it will result in a team effort to examine new evidence and provide DNA tests for inmates whose guilt has come under question.
The move follows two high-profile Orange County cases in which wrongly convicted defendants spent years in prison, and it comes as the legal establishment struggles to determine whether there are other innocent people behind bars.
For example, the San Diego district attorney's office has already offered to conduct free DNA testing for defendants who believe biological evidence will clear them. Ventura County last month began a program in which it would foot half the bill for DNA tests for some inmates who feel they were wrongly convicted. The cost of a DNA test runs $2,000 to $5,000.
And state Sen. John Burton (D-San Francisco) has introduced legislation that would require prosecutors to provide DNA testing to defendants who claim they were wrongly convicted.
The Orange County proposal would take this effort a step further by having public defenders work directly with prosecutors to investigate claims of injustice.
"I think it would be a great first," said Public Defender Carl Holmes, who suggested the idea. "There's no question in my mind, having been a defense attorney for 31 years, that mistakes are made."
The program would rely heavily on the volunteer work of students from UC Irvine and Western State College of Law, who would do some of the legwork on the cases.
Both the public defender and district attorney's offices quietly began working on separate "innocence projects" earlier this year after a judge ordered the release of DeWayne McKinney, who spent nearly 20 years in prison, wrongly convicted of an Orange County murder.
Assistant Dist. Atty. Mike Jacobs said prosecutors are now receptive to examining cases referred by the public defender and, if warranted, asking the sheriff's crime lab to conduct DNA and other tests. In 1996, Jacobs obtained the release of Kevin Green, an Orange County man also convicted of murder, after DNA testing showed someone else committed the crime.
"I can't say there isn't another McKinney or Kevin Green out there," Jacobs said.
