A monstrous injustice underway in Florida

It ought to be impossible to imagine an American government that deliberately leaves innocent people in prison. But in Florida, present reality is precisely that savage scenario. In 157 cases across the nation, it has been established to a moral certainty that innocent prisoners can be exonerated by the recent science of DNA testing. Wilton Dedge, the Floridian who lost 22 years of his life for a rape he did not commit, is one of them. Without doubt, there are more prisoners whose innocence cries to Florida's collective conscience.

Yet with less than two weeks left in this year's session, the Florida Legislature is not only apparently unwilling to compensate Dedge, but it is also failing to extend an Oct. 1 deadline to file testing petitions on behalf of at least 700 other people still in prison. Their cases have languished because only a handful of volunteers, unpaid by the state, are available to help them or to lobby for extension of the deadline. On that date, clerks of court and other keepers of DNA evidence in closed cases will be technically at liberty to destroy it.

This unconscionable situation owes to no external force. The state attorneys do not oppose an extension. Neither does the governor. Attorney General Charlie Crist said in an interview last week that the prisoners' advocates are entitled to "the appropriate amount of time to do the job and do it right." The reason appears primarily a matter of indifference on the part of committees that should have undertaken to extend the deadline, complicated by turf-guarding, finger-pointing and ego among some members who could not be bothered to listen. "It just fell through the woodwork," claims House Criminal Justice Committee Chairman Dick Kravitz, R-Jacksonville. None of that resembles a pardonable excuse.

Were Florida legislators not listening, or did they choose not to hear, when President Bush spoke to the subject in his State of the Union address? This is what the president said: "Because one of the main sources of our national unity is our belief in equal justice ... we need to make doubly sure no person is held to account for a crime he or she did not commit - so we are dramatically expanding the use of DNA evidence to prevent wrongful conviction." The president also asked Congress for money to finance DNA testing grants for state prisoners under a law he signed last year. To qualify, Florida needs the legislation that the House and Senate will not hear.

Many technicalities stand in the way of pending attempts to pass the extension as amendments to other legislation. There is almost nothing the Legislature cannot do, however, when its leaders set their minds to it. It is now the inescapable moral duty of House Speaker Allan Bense and Senate President Tom Lee to get the extension enacted. It bears remembering that everything that Florida legislators do, or do not do, is in the name and by the authority of the people. In our names and by our authority, they are on the verge of perpetrating a monstrous injustice.

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