United States Ninth Circuit

In an Alaska prisoner's 42 U.S.C. section 1983 action brought to compel the Anchorage D.A.'s office to allow him post-conviction access to certain biological evidence that was used to convict him in 1994, a judgment finding that plaintiff has a limited due process right of access to the evidence for purposes of post-conviction DNA testing is affirmed although the circuit court declines to set the standards by which all such future cases must be judged, and limits its analysis to this particular set of circumstances which presented a meritorious case for disclosure. Plaintiff's confession during parole proceedings did not necessarily trump the materiality of physical evidence or the right to obtain post-conviction access to evidence.

Appellate Information

• Argued 10/10/2007
• Decided 04/02/2008
• Published 04/02/2008

Judges

• BRUNETTI, Circuit Judge:, Before:  ALFRED T. GOODWIN, MELVIN BRUNETTI, and W. FLETCHER, Circuit Judges.

Court

• United States Ninth Circuit

Counsel

• For Appellees:
  
• Nancy R. Simel, Assistant Attorney General, Anchorage, AK, for defendant-appellant., Peter J. Neufeld and Colin Starger, Innocence Project, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, New York, NY;  Randall S. Cavanaugh, Kalamarides & Lambert, Anchorage, AK;  and Robert C. Bundy, Dorsey & Whitney LLP, Anchorage, AK, for plaintiff-appellee.