Dispatches from the Creation Wars

Already, three men convicted with help from a discredited dog handler -- who manufactured bogus evidence to connect suspects with crimes -- have been exonerated after spending years, even decades, behind bars.

But the dog handler testified in many more cases. And judicial activists are convinced others were wrongfully convicted.

Yet the men who could actually do something about that -- Gov. Charlie Crist, Attorney General Bill McCollum and Brevard-Seminole State Attorney Norm Wolfinger -- have refused to conduct an investigation.

Instead, these three career politicians have argued that it's up to the defendants themselves to prove their own innocence ... from behind bars ... and without resources.

Then, in cases where the wrongfully convicted are finally freed, they respond: See, the system works!

The lack of shame and humanity is appalling.

Only the most callous of souls could point to someone who lost the majority of his life to a wrongful imprisonment and suggest he is a shining example of justice in America.

In fact, even now -- even with a national justice group claiming that it has found a fourth man wrongfully sentenced to life in prison and connected to the discredited dog handler -- the system churns at a slow grind.

Last week, the state finally agreed to DNA testing for that man, Gary Bennett.

The news was good but also overdue.

It came nearly two months after Bennett's attorneys with the Princeton, N.J.-based Centurion Ministries filed their request for DNA testing -- and more than 25 years after Bennett was first sentenced.

That means Bennett will have waited more than a quarter-century for simply the chance to scientifically prove his guilt or innocence.

Why? Because often, these cases are simply not priorities for our elected officials.

The wrongly convicted, after all, don't constitute a powerful voting bloc. They don't write campaign checks. Many have few friends or family members.

"If there's one thing these guys have in common," said Centurion Ministries attorney Paul Casteleiro, "it's that they are all guys nobody will miss."

They didn't have the resources to mount vigorous defenses when they were first charged -- or knowledgeable attorneys who could combat the tactics, such as jail-house snitches, that are so often used to convict them.

He argues that the state should establish an innocence commission. I agree. Every state should have them. Their job would be to review the investigative and trial record for all major crimes to find cases where there are major inconsistencies, police or prosecutorial misconduct, questionable testimony, etc. This is an important first step to fixing what is wrong with our criminal justice system, but it's only a first step.