JD Crowe: ‘DNA doesn’t lie:’ On death row in Alabama, DNA doesn’t matter
This is an opinion cartoon.
Editor’s Note: The state of Alabama has a complicated relationship with science, and its criminal courts are no exception. Often, state prosecutors defend debunked junk science, like bite marks, to keep people in prison. Other times, they ignore updated scientific findings, such as recent DNA tests, to defend old theories that led to a conviction. In this series, AL.com will highlight several cases where science is at odds with the sentence.
Major props, high fives and fist bumps to my friend and esteemed AL.com colleague Ivana Hrynkiw for doing the heavy lifting on the story behind today’s cartoon. I just did a drive-by hit and run drawing.
Ivana did all the deep dive investigative work, fidgeting, fretting, writing, cussing and reporting on her latest AL.com series, Alabama vs. Science. It’s great work. There’s more to come.
The first story of the series was published under the headline: Confronted with DNA, Alabama offers theory that ‘defies logic’ to keep man on death row.
Here are some excerpts:
Christopher Barbour’s entire adult life has hinged on words he uttered when he was 22.
More than 30 years ago, Barbour confessed to police that he killed a 40-year-old single mother in Montgomery and helped another man rape her. Almost immediately he tried to take back the confession — he said later that he didn’t do it nor even know the woman — but it was too late.
Barbour remains on Alabama’s death row.
But now, new DNA testing points to someone else — a man who’s already in prison for an unrelated murder. Yet there is no cinematic rush to release Barbour. Instead, there is a push by prosecutors to explain away the DNA.
“It’s a refusal to admit error, not to accept the science,” said Robert Dunham, the director of the Death Penalty Policy Project.
Back in 1992, Barbour was homeless. Police found him living behind the mall across town, and Barbour said he was pressured to falsely confess to the grisly crime that had happened a few weeks prior.
State prosecutors now acknowledge that the only DNA at the scene belongs to someone else, but they argue that doesn’t clear Barbour.
Now 55 years old, Barbour isn’t the only person who remains in Alabama’s prison system despite evidence suggesting he didn’t do the crime. Alabama’s legal system has a complicated relationship with science, one that often plays out however is most advantageous for the state’s case.
The state, often through the Alabama Attorney General’s Office in its criminal appellate work, has a history of defending junk science, of relying on old, now-debunked theories to keep people locked in prison for a crime there is little evidence they committed.
They often choose those old theories over new, updated science.
“One of the things you hear about the death penalty, which is true, is that the facts don’t matter once somebody has been sentenced to death,” said Dunham.
In the case of Barbour, U.S. District Judge Emily Marks in an order last year wrote that the state’s version of the crime is hard to accept “because the theory defies logic, common sense, and science.”
Read the full story here and stay tuned for the rest of this compelling Alabama vs Science series. There will be lots to draw from it.
JD Crowe is the cartoonist for Alabama Media Group andAL.com. He won the RFK Human Rights Award for Editorial Cartoons in 2020. In 2018, he was awarded the Rex Babin Memorial Award for local and state cartoons by the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. Follow JD on Facebook, Twitter@Crowejam andInstagram @JDCrowepix. Give him a holler @jdcrowe@al.com.
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