On March 1, a Hartford judge officially dismissed a decades-old murder charge against Alfred Swinton. Swinton, who served 18 years of a 60-year sentence, was released last June after DNA testing exculpated him, and a forensic expert who testified at his trial recanted.
But it was not until this month, when the state’s attorney confirmed that her office would not retry Swinton, that the miscarriage of justice that claimed nearly two decades of a man’s life was rectified. Swinton’s story provides an opportunity for Connecticut to critically examine the ways in which forensic evidence can threaten the integrity of the criminal justice system—and how, in the process, we can look for answers.
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