DNA in the News - May 30 - June 5, 2001

DNA EVIDENCE IN CRIMINAL CASES

Prosecutors have charged Long Island dentist Dr. Jairo Rendon with sodomy and sexual abuse of a patient. At trial this week, the female patient testified that she went to Rendon’s office for treatment of a cavity. During the procedure, Rendon administered nitrous oxide, a gas that dentists use to relax patients and reduce their pain, made the victim drowsy. The patient furthered testified that after the gas made her drowsy, Rendon violated her orally and ejaculated on her blouse. DNA analysts recovered a semen sample that matched the dentist’s genetic profile. Rendon’s lawyer argued that the gas confused the patient and made her hallucinate.
Austin Fenner, Patient Tells of Dentist Abuse, Daily News (New York), June 1, 2001, at 5.

Authorities have charged Sean Evans with the 1994 rape and murder of Chicago teenager Danielle White. The case remained unsolved until recently when police arrested Evans for a different rape that occurred at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Police obtained a DNA sample from him and then compared his genetic profile with evidence from the 1994 crime scene, yielding a match.
Steve Warmbir, Cop Never Gave Up; DNA May Have Solved '94 Murder, Police Say, Chicago Sun-Times, June 1, at 3.

Five years ago, police discovered 21-year old Juli Busken raped and murdered near her apartment in Oklahoma. The perpetrator, who has yet to be apprehended, left semen in Busken’s car. Police recently obtained 200 blood samples from men who lived near Busken, had violent criminal records, were suspects, or resembled the police sketch. Most of the men gave the samples voluntarily, though some did not, forcing police to obtain search warrants. Although police found no matches, they intend to collect more samples of possible suspects to solve this case. Opponents of these large-scale DNA fear errors implicating the wrong person and that the medical information from the blood sample might be given to health insurance companies. The first mass blood screening occurred in 1987 in England; 5,000 people had blood tested following the rapes and murders of two teenagers. In the United States, the legality of such mass testing has not been tested.
Jennifer L. Brown, Police Begin Genetic Dragnet; 200 Tested, Raising Privacy Concerns, Times-Picayune (New Orleans), May 31, 2001, at 13.

DNA has linked Byron A. Bradford, who currently faces a rape charge in Kentucky, to another rape that took place in West Memphis, Arkansas. The Arkansas attack occurred this part April, and the Memphis rape took place in May 2000. In both cases, the perpetrator posed as a police officer. Bradford had been working as a security guard. Because Kentucky is one of 34 states that send DNA profiles from sex offenders to the FBI database, investigators were able to match Bradford’s genetic profile to the DNA evidence from the Arkansas crime scene.
Chris Kenning, Suspect in Rape Charged; Louisville, Arkansas Attacks Both Involve Police Impersonation, Courier-J. (Louisville, KY.), May 30, 2001, at 1b.

In Bartow, Florida, prosecutors will appeal a ruling preventing the admission of DNA evidence in the case of 17-year old Donald McPherson Jr., who allegedly raped and murdered his ex-girlfriend, 15-year old Sarah Barham in 1999. Last year, Circuit Judge Robert Young excluded the DNA test linking McPherson to semen from Barham’s body because the prosecution did not present the DNA reports to the defense in a timely manner. The case was delayed for a year while the state appealed a different matter concerning McPherson’s confession; thus, the state contends the defense has had a year since the original trial date to review and analyze the test results.
Bill Heery, Jury Being Picked in Teen's Slaying, Tampa Trib., May 30, 2001, at 4.

POSTCONVICTION DNA TESTING

The Washington Post spent a year investigating four cases in which the Prince George’s County police were alleged to have coerced false confessions and otherwise denied suspects their state and federal rights. In one such case, DNA evidence was key to proving that police had the wrong suspect. Keith Longtin spent 28 hours homicide detectives in the interrogation room before confessing, though police failed to obtain a signed statement. Based largely on this confession, he spent eight months in jail awaiting trial for the 1999 murder and rape of his wife. Prosecutors dropped the charges against him when investigators from the sex crime unit linked DNA evidence from the crime scene to Antonio D. Oesby, who is a suspect in several other sexual assaults.
April Witt, Allegations of Abuses Mar Murder Cases, Wash. Post, June 3, 2001, at A1.

Buchanan County Circuit Judge Keary R. Williams of Virginia denied a request to test the DNA evidence in the case of Roger Keith Coleman, who officials executed in 1992 for the rape and murder of his sister-in-law Wanda McCoy. The Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, and the Virginia Pilot of Norfolk, as well as Centurion Ministries, a charity that investigates claims of wrongful convictions, made the request. The groups believed that Coleman, who always claimed his innocence, was wrongly executed. In his opinion, Judge Williams said there was no benefit to reexamining the case: "How can investigation of the death penalty as it was implemented in 1992 be beneficial in scrutinizing the death penalty as it is carried out in 2001 when the processes are so different?"

Originally, the judge ordered that the biological material be turned over to the state Division of Forensic Science, but left the decision of whether to preserve or destroy the evidence up to the agency. A spokesman for Virginia Attorney General Mark L. Earley said the office agreed with the ruling; it does not believe the newspapers have standing to sue for retesting or that such testing would benefit the public. However, such a petition is not novel. A collection of news organizations successfully petitioned for post-execution DNA testing in Georgia in 2000. The tests were inconclusive.
Carol Morello, Court Rejects DNA Test for Man Killed By Va. in '92, Wash. Post, June 2, 2001, at A9; John Aloysius Farrell, Judge Denies Bid for DNA Test to Verify Guilt of Executed Man, Boston Globe, June 2, 2001, at A3.

This past Wednesday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ordered a Collin County trial court to hold evidentiary hearings on new DNA evidence pertaining to Michael Blair’s death row appeal. In 1994, a jury convicted Blair of the murder of seven-year old Ashley Estell. The hearing will decide if new DNA evidence, if presented at his trial, would have changed the outcome. In March of this year, new DNA tests performed on hair found on Estell’s body did not yield a match with Blair’s genetic profile. The forensic analyst from the original trial stated that microscopic analysis had already excluded Blair as donating those hairs. Previous tests proved that Estell’s hair was not found in Blair’s car. At the hearing, the judge will also consider whether the state should have revealed the mental status of the forensic analyst, who was released from psychiatric care prior to the Blair trial.
Holly Becka, DNA Hearings Ordered for Blair; Court to Review New Test Results, Dallas Morning News, May 31, 2001, at 1A.