How many Richard Danzigers or Gary Lamars will it take before Congress gets the message? DNA testing protects the innocent and identifies the guilty.

Hearings were held yesterday on the Innocence Protection Act. Peter Neufeld of the Innocence Project at Cardozo Law School (co-founded by Neufeld and Barry Scheck) testified, pointing out:

• Passage of the Innocence Protection Act will double the number of prisoners cleared each year by DNA evidence.

• DNA testing varies widely state-to-state, and some prosecutors actively resist efforts to reopen old cases to new science.

• At least 132 Americans, twelve of them on death row, have been exonerated since DNA testing began. Last year, 20 people were exonerated based on DNA.

The Justice Department is resisting the Innocence Protection Act, apparently fearful of a deluge of testing requests. Nonsense. As Neufeld points out,

"...most of the people in prison are guilty ... they know they're guilty and they don't want to go near the DNA test."

For more on the Innocence Protection Act, what it provides, its history and why it's needed, go here. Read this letter from cops and prosecutors supporting the Act. We hope you will contact your elected officials in Congress and tell them to pass the IPA--no innocent person should be kept in jail when available evidence could prove their innocence.