What role do public defenders play in wrongful convictions?
Scheck: Public defenders are some of the best lawyers in this country, even though as a whole, the system of court-appointed lawyers and public defenders is woefully underfunded and so many of them are not in a position to do a good or competent job. But there are many, many public defenders who are liberty’s last champions. Take the story of Glen Dale Woodall, a grave digger in West Virginia who was convicted of two abduction rapes. DNA evidence showed he was innocent. Then attention turned to the crime-lab director who had testified against him, named Fred Zane. Zane had been the crime-lab director in West Virginia for 10 years. It turned out, after an investigation of what had happened in Woodall’s case, they found that in 133 cases, Zane had been “dry-labbing.” He either didn’t do the test or got inconclusive results and then said that they matched what the police wanted anyhow. He had since moved on to San Antonio where he was involved in phony DNA tests and misconduct in that jur
