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What you failed to mention about Barry Scheck [NATION, Sept. 13] is that this is the same Barry Scheck who convincingly argued in the O.J. Simpson trial that DNA samples can be contaminated and made useless (or at least open to "reasonable doubt") as scientific evidence in a criminal trial. Through his own arguments, we are left with two possible conclusions: either Scheck is freeing potentially guilty people through the Innocence Project, or he successfully defended a double murderer he knew to be guilty. I don't know whether to laud this man or deplore him. JEFFREY M. LLEWELLYN Denver
Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, through their Innocence Project, are working to free the wrongly imprisoned, and I am disturbed that "even many prosecutors" concede that this is an important function. Are the other prosecutors more interested in convictions than in justice?
The Innocence Project's positive proof of the fallibility of the criminal-justice system argues for the abolition of capital punishment. The unfortunate innocents who pay this ultimate penalty cannot benefit from scientific advances and good work by organizations like the Innocence Project. Tragically, they will never have justice. MARILYN W. HAAKER Pacific Palisades, Calif.
After reading that DNA testing is freeing people who were wrongly convicted, I wonder whether anyone worries about defendants who were wrongly convicted using DNA testing. From 1989 to 1993, here in Oklahoma, DNA evidence was the only murder-trial evidence implicating a Native American defendant from my family. The initial defense included reports of flagrant mishandling of DNA evidence, but this was ignored. Only after three trials and with a court-appointed defense DNA expert was my family member acquitted. RUSSELL L. BATES Anadarko, Okla.