Innocence Blog

Four to Go

Posted: March 17, 2009

It’s been a good week for DNA testing access. Yesterday, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour signed a new law granting DNA testing access to prisoners when it can definitively prove innocence or guilt. Mississippi’s law comes on the heels of the new DNA access law passed last week in South Dakota. When the Innocence Project started doing this work 15 years ago, not a single state had a DNA testing access law. Now there are just four states to go: Alabama, Alaska, Massachusetts and Oklahoma.

The Mississippi law also requires that law enforcement agencies preserve biological evidence collected as long as a case is unsolved or a convicted defendant is under state supervision in connection with the case. About half of the states now have laws requiring evidence preservation.

Click here for more on these two landmark laws, and for an interactive map on the reforms in place in your state.