If Andrew Cuomo is going to use this Deskovic case against Jeanine Pirro, then someone should ask him whether he is also criticizing his supposed mentor, Robert Morgenthau.
Remember the Central Park Jogger case? Like Deskovic, this was also a 1989 crime with a 1990 conviction. This case also had DNA evidence that didn't match any of the defendants. It also involved convicted defendants who were proclaiming their innocence.
So, when did DA Morgenthau submit that unmatched DNA to the State Databank? Never. [And Matias Reyes, the convicted murderer and rapist whom that DNA eventually matched, was in prison from 1991 on, and because he was a convicted rapist, would have been one of the first inmates to have to submit DNA into the databank.]
In fact, Morgenthau did nothing on the case until Reyes came forward and confessed in 2002. Only then was a one-on-one DNA comparison done.
What Morgenthau didn't do isn't any different from what Pirro didn't do. If the Innocence Project had asked either of them to put that unmatched DNA into the State Databank before someone had confessed, I'm sure both would have done so. You can't really blame either of them for failing to remember, when the Databank finally went into operation, that they had some DNA in an old case that never matched up. [And in Pirro's case, the old case wasn't even hers.]
Andrew Cuomo, on the other hand, can be faulted for the hypocrisy of accusing his opponent of failing to do something, and not making a similar charge against his old boss.
If Andrew Cuomo is going to use this Deskovic case against Jeanine Pirro, then someone should ask him whether he is also criticizing his supposed mentor, Robert Morgenthau.
Remember the Central Park Jogger case? Like Deskovic, this was also a 1989 crime with a 1990 conviction. This case also had DNA evidence that didn't match any of the defendants. It also involved convicted defendants who were proclaiming their innocence.
So, when did DA Morgenthau submit that unmatched DNA to the State Databank? Never. [And Matias Reyes, the convicted murderer and rapist whom that DNA eventually matched, was in prison from 1991 on, and because he was a convicted rapist, would have been one of the first inmates to have to submit DNA into the databank.]
In fact, Morgenthau did nothing on the case until Reyes came forward and confessed in 2002. Only then was a one-on-one DNA comparison done.
What Morgenthau didn't do isn't any different from what Pirro didn't do. If the Innocence Project had asked either of them to put that unmatched DNA into the State Databank before someone had confessed, I'm sure both would have done so. You can't really blame either of them for failing to remember, when the Databank finally went into operation, that they had some DNA in an old case that never matched up. [And in Pirro's case, the old case wasn't even hers.]
Andrew Cuomo, on the other hand, can be faulted for the hypocrisy of accusing his opponent of failing to do something, and not making a similar charge against his old boss.