News Release
For Immediate Release
June 12, 2001
 

Greenleaf Bills on DNA Testing and Leased Vehicles Pass Senate

HARRISBURG—The Pennsylvania Senate has approved two separate measures offered by Sen. Stewart J. Greenleaf. One bill would provide for exculpatory DNA testing for inmates and the other would include leased vehicles under the consumer protections of the state’s auto lemon law.

Senate Bill 589 would offer DNA testing to eligible prisoners seeking to prove their innocence, and for death row inmates trying to show their innocence of the crime or of an aggravating circumstance that led to the imposition of the death penalty. Under the bill, death row inmates would be able to seek DNA testing also for the purpose of demonstrating a mitigating circumstance that might lead to reducing a sentence of death to one of life imprisonment.

The measure would limit eligibility to those who were tried and incarcerated before the existence of forensic DNA technology, or in cases in which a defense counsel failed to seek testing or failed to receive testing for an indigent client because the state refused to pay for it.

Additionally, an applicant for testing must present a case that the identity of, or the participation in the crime by, the defendant was at issue in his conviction, and that the DNA testing would establish the applicant’s actual innocence. Also, the evidence to be tested must be found by the court to have been part of a chain of custody sufficient to establish that it was not subject to alteration. Testing would be done by a laboratory agreed upon by the applicant and the district attorney, and the applicant would pay the cost. However, if the applicant cannot pay, then the State Police laboratory would conduct the testing at the expense of the commonwealth.

Nineteen other states have laws providing for post-conviction testing as proposed in SB 589.

Under Senate Bill 286, Pennsylvania would join the 46 states that currently give automobile lemon law protections to consumers who lease vehicles.

Greenleaf said his bill would close a loophole in the commonwealth’s lemon law, which offers protections against defective vehicles to new car buyers but not to leasers. "Leased vehicles account for more than 35 percent of all new car transactions in the state," Greenleaf said

"Those who lease should be covered by the same protections as those who buy."