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HEADLINE: BOOK    REVIEW MY BACK PAGES / MICHAEL REZENDES Michael Rezendes is a member of the Globe staff.;
A BOOK WITH BEHIND-THE-SCENES SPLASH

BYLINE: BY MICHAEL REZENDES, GLOBE STAFF

BODY:
It didn't make much of a splash when it was published last winter, but "Actual Innocence" (Doubleday, $24.95), a powerful account of the use of DNA evidence in exonerating the wrongly convicted, is well on its way to becoming one of the most influential books of the year. Written by New York lawyers Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld and New York Daily News columnist Jim Dwyer, this telling litany of justice gone awry stands at the eye of a gathering storm over death penalty convictions that is sweeping state houses across the land.

This is more than coincidence. Scheck and Neufeld, part of the O. J. Simpson "dream team" of defense lawyers, pioneered the use of DNA testing in a judicial system too often influenced by unscrupulous investigators, ineffectual defense lawyers, and the raw emotions that inevitably accompany capital crimes. They also helped instigate the current debate over capital punishment by helping to free condemned inmates from prisons throughout the country after using DNA evidence to prove they were innocent.     In the book's sole entertaining digression, the authors explain how an easygoing California genius advanced DNA genetic testing to the point where even the tiniest bits of human tissue - typically semen, blood, hair, and flecks of skin - can be used as conclusive proof in a criminal investigation or trial. But because thousands of prisoners were convicted before the procedure became readily available less than a decade ago, it has been left to lawyers such as Scheck, Neufeld, and a few others to rattle the doors and windows of prosecutors and judges who are often reluctant to open old wounds by revisiting settled cases.

Incredibly, only two states - New York and Illinois - have laws permitting DNA tests after conviction, meaning that Scheck and Neufeld have had to undertake dozens of Kafkaesque legal journeys in order to win the tests for their long-suffering clients; often they prevail only after personal pleas to district attorneys and judges. The stories of those freed are told here in a meticulously structured series of narratives designed to expose specific weakness in the criminal justice system. Chapter by chapter, case by case, the authors highlight the grave dangers posed by mistaken eyewitnesses, false confessions, jailhouse snitches, inexact forensic science, overzealous prosecutors, incompetent defense lawyers, and racial prejudice - all through the shocking stories of ordinary people wrongly convicted and finally released to return to their everyday lives.

They include the story of Roy Williamson, a sad-sack onetime minor league baseball player laid low by mental illness, who was convicted of the rape and murder of an Oklahoma woman based on the testimony of a jailhouse snitch. Taunted to the brink of madness by guards using the prison intercom, Williamson spent 11 years on death row until DNA tests proved he'd been wrongly convicted - with only five days remaining before his scheduled execution.

Also included is the story of Calvin Johnson Jr., the product of an upwardly-mobile, middle class black family, who was accused of two rapes by two white women in Georgia. In one case, an all-white jury convicted Johnson, even though the victim said her attacker was clean-shaven while Johnson wore a beard. In the second case, a racially mixed jury acquitted him. But Johnson still spent more than a decade behind bars for the first conviction, enduring a series of torturous appeals that bankrupted his family until DNA testing finally proved his innocence.

As compelling as these stories may be, they merely illustrate the urgency of the book's chilling overall findings: At the time of publication, in the quarter-century since the US Supreme Court granted states the authority to impose capital punishment, 553 people had been executed in the United States while another 80 had been found innocent on appeal - meaning that for every seven people put to death, one was exonerated at what amounted to the 11th hour.

Moreover, as the authors point out, not all criminal convictions involve human evidence that can be identified through DNA testing. The semen left behind by a murderer who also commits rape will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt whether an accused person is guilty or innocent. But someone wrongly charged or convicted of murder with a firearm rarely has a chance to turn to DNA. The telltale human evidence that would set the record straight just isn't there.

Equally disturbing, the authors say, is the fact that the book's findings, along with the increased use of DNA testing, come at a time when the opportunities for those convicted of murder to mount federal appeals have been dramatically reduced. In a vastly under-appreciated development, the 1996 Antiterrorism and Death Penalty Reform Act, approved in the emotional aftermath of the terrorist bombings of the World Trade Center and the Oklahoma City federal building, virtually closed off federal appeals by giving those convicted of murder only six months to file.

Isn't all that sufficient reason to justify an end to the death penalty? Significantly, the authors never say. Instead, they have organized the chapters of "Actual Innocence" into clearly defined themes leading to a series of recommendations for reform of the criminal justice system. Among them: provisions for post-conviction DNA testing in all 50 states; the creation of independent facilities for forensic scientists, to insulate them from the influence of police and district attorneys; the establishment of independent panels to review testimony from jailhouse snitches, who are usually provided with strong incentives to please prosecutors with their testimony; and provisions requiring all confessions and interrogations to be videotaped, to help prevent the coercion and intimidation of witnesses and the accused.

This is dry stuff, to be sure, but crucial to any guarantee of a fair and just society. Indeed, the factual and generally understated tone used by the authors (even the rendering of the personal stories is formulaic) may have contributed to the book's initially measured reception. But now it appears their admirable attempt to steer clear of the emotional death penalty debate has allowed "Actual Innocence" to stand as an objective reference for partisans of all stripes who are reevaluating their positions on capital punishment. Conservative columnist George Will, for instance, hailed the book in a column that criticized the death penalty as "a government program" worthy of skepticism.

Nevertheless, as these debates rage, the authors here are content to argue that, whatever the outcome, courts throughout the land have an obligation to do a much better job of ensuring that only the guilty are convicted.

LOAD-DATE: September 22, 2000