In 2001, the Florida Legislature passed a law establishing a two-year deadline for prisoners to file for DNA tests that could be used to exonerate them of crimes. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Now it doesn't. As it turns out, two years isn't enough time for scores of inmates to gather all the data necessary to justify a request for DNA tests. The chance to determine if they have been wrongfully convicted will slip away after the Oct. 1 deadline unless the Legislature or Florida Supreme Court intervenes.

No one should have to serve time for a crime that he or she didn't commit. Nor should there be a time limit on proving one's innocence. State lawmakers, at their earliest opportunity, should extend the deadline, or, better still, eliminate it altogether. In the meantime, we hope that defense lawyers ask the state Supreme Court for an extension of the deadline.

Eliminating or extending the deadline might seem like a straightforward proposition, but some important people have raised objections. Foremost among them: state prosecutors, whose job descriptions, by the way, require that they seek justice -- not merely win convictions. ''We were in favor of the deadline,'' Buddy Jacobs, counsel for the Florida Prosecuting Attorneys Association, told The St. Petersburg Times. ``It brings some finality to the cases -- finality for the families and victims.''

But who would want ''finality'' to cost an innocent person their freedom, or worse, their life? The Legislature created the two-year window for testing after DNA tests exonerated Frank Lee Smith, a Broward County man who died of cancer while on Death Row nearly a year before new tests cleared him of the 1985 rape and murder of an 8-year-old girl. Since then, another South Florida man, Jerry Frank Townsend, has been cleared of rape and murder after DNA tests showed that he wasn't involved in the crimes for which he served 22 years in prison.

In Florida, at least 23 inmates have been cleared of murder convictions since 1972, a fact that prosecutors and police say proves that the criminal justice system works. In truth, most of the exonerations have come despite the strenuous objections and vigorous opposition of the law-enforcement community. Indeed, many of the exonerations have resulted from the work of volunteer law students and pro-bono lawyers working with independent groups such as the Innocence Project at Cardozo Law School in New York, which has an affiliate in Florida.

State lawmakers should be mindful of two facts as the deadline approaches: DNA testing isn't a magic elixir that automatically produces positive results for convicts. It can prove guilt as well as innocence. And second, the criminal justice system isn't infallible. Mistakes are inevitable. Correcting the errors is everybody's duty, particularly prosecutors, judges and lawmakers who are in a position to make changes.