New York prisoners do not have a constitutional right to access physical evidence for post-conviction DNA testing, a federal appellate panel has ruled.
In reversing a Brooklyn judge’s decision ordering the Queen’s District Attorney’s Office to provide a prisoner with access to the knife he allegedly used to stab his estranged wife, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit applied for the first time the seminal 2009 U.S. Supreme Court decision, District Attorney’s Office v. Osborne, 129 S. Ct. 2308.
