Lessons Not Learned - The Innocence Project

ConCLUsIon
Several New Yorkers who were exonerated through DNA testing have
shared their experience with the State Legislature in an effort to pass
the reforms outlined in this report. As Innocence Project Co-Director
Peter Neufeld told an Assembly Committee earlier this year, “I’d
like each of these gentlemen to speak. Because what you’ll see is that
we didn’t just select these exonerees at random, but each of them –
their stories, their cases – raise issues that are part of your legislative
package. And so it makes it much more significant, I think, when
you realize how human beings are affected by what you want to do
here today.”
Following are excerpts of legislative testimony over the last year by
several of the 23 people in New York State who have been exonerated
through DNA testing.
“I don’t want to undermine anything that is going on here or anything,
but we are almost in the year 2007. It is ludicrous that this
stuff cannot be inventoried. How can they not inventory evidence?”
— Scott Fappiano of Brooklyn, testifying before the New York State Assembly
Standing Committee on Codes and Correction in October 2006 – less than a week
after he was exonerated.
“Now they want to come up and say, okay, we have one year [to seek
DNA testing after a conviction]. It takes one year just to get into a
courtroom and sometimes longer for a judge to hear a case. It takes,
as you people know, as the attorneys know, it takes effort and a long
36 THe InnoCenCe PRoJeCT