In re Wiley, 2012 VT
76.
One of the main beneficiaries of DNA science in the last 30
years has been the criminal justice system.
As the testing becomes better, more widely available, and more reliable,
the question of whodunit is more and more likely to have a solution.
The effectiveness of DNA evidence has not only been a
prospective boon to current defendants, but it has proven to be a holy grail
for those who claimed to be wrongly convicted and seek exoneration. One need only quickly browse the Innocent Project and other, similar organizations to see that
DNA testing of old evidence is a vital method of correcting flawed verdicts.
As a result of such work, many states, including Vermont,
have adopted Innocence Protection Acts (IPA) designed to provide convicted
felons with access to DNA testing. The
balancing act here lies between giving convicts meaningful access to DNA (and
potentially exoneration) and not merely making this another wild goose chase
for inmates that have no chance at proving their innocence but have every
incentive for requesting such procedures.
In other words, the IPA is intended to give inmates a
legitimate chance to prove their innocence without bogging down the system with
meritless issues.
Today’s case tests the threshold of the IPA and rules on
what types of situations are eligible for the IPA’s DNA testing.
Defendant was convicted in 2005 of raping his under-aged stepdaughter
several times on the step-daughter’s bed.
In addition to the step-daughter’s testimony, the police found a set of semen
stains on her sheets that DNA testing linked to the Defendant. The State also brought forward several
witnesses that corroborated the details of the victim’s testimony and a
sanitary napkin found near the bed that also supported the victim’s
testimony.
At trial and since then, Defendant has denied the charges
levied against him and sought to refute the victim’s testimony. In his defense, Defendant claimed that the
semen stains on the bed came from an incident where he had sex on the victim’s
bed with his wife, the victim’s mother.
At trial, the mother offered testimony of this nature, but
there was evidence at the time that Defendant urged the mother to testify about
this sexual encounter when she did not remember having such an encounter on her
daughter’s bed. The jury did not believe
mother’s testimony and Defendant was convicted.
Mother has since recanted her testimony and no longer support’s
Defendant’s attempt at exoneration.
This brings us to the issue of the present case. Defendant seeks DNA testing on a few skin
flakes that were collected from the bed but were not definitively linked to
anyone. Defendant argues that if these
flakes are given the full DNA testing, they will prove to be from the mother,
which would confirm Defendant’s story.
The problem here is two-fold. First, mother’s DNA was never tested. Testing the skin samples will determine their
DNA, but they will not link to the mother unless her DNA is tested.
Second, and seemingly more fatal to Defendant’s case, is
that even if the skin samples proved to be from the mother, it does not necessarily
prove Defendant’s innocence. It is not a
zero-sum game. The conclusion that
Defendant may have had sex with both the victim and the mother on the same bed is
just as likely to follow from a testing result that linked the skin samples to
the mother.
In this case, the trial court denied Defendant’s motion on the
second basis for lack of probability.
On appeal, the SCOV does not get the issue of
probability. Instead, it focuses its
brief decision on the issue of whether the IPA allows for DNA testing when such
testing necessarily requires a new DNA sample.
The SCOV rules that the IPA is explicitly limited to existing samples
and cannot compel DNA testing that would require the state to obtain new DNA
samples from a non-party.
For the SCOV this is a simple matter of statutory
interpretation. The IPA is written so
that it only compels the testing of existing samples. Normally, such testing would be done to prove
that the Defendant was not connected to the biological evidence on which the
conviction was based. Call it not-my-semen-testing.
In this case, though, Defendant wants DNA to confirm that he
was at the scene of the crime—just with someone else. But the testing would require a new sample
from a non-party, which the IPA was not intended to compel. So Defendant’s situation essentially falls
outside of the purpose and scope of the IPA, and the relief sought is
unavailable.
That’s all. The SCOV ignores
the Defendant’s request to analyze the probability that this evidence would
have altered the outcome of his case. It
also makes a brief ruling on the arguments that there is a constitutional need
to obtain additional DNA evidence. The
SCOV rules that such rights to compel evidence are limited to the time before a
verdict and are unavailable to a party as a matter of law for post-conviction
relief. The reasoning is short and
blunt.
Of course, the SCOV’s decision leaves more questions than it
answers. As the SCOV admits, the IPA is
a relatively new and untested law in Vermont.
In many ways, today’s case appears to be a situation where the SCOV is
unwilling to break new ground or offer specific guidance because of the
facts. They say that bad facts make bad
cases, which make bad law. And the SCOV
seems to be cognizant that it could go farther on the facts of today’s case,
but it would risk creating a precedent that would frustrate the purpose of the
law under a set of more favorable or complicated facts.
This is the dilemma of the SCOV. How far should it rule in a particular case? Today, the answer would appear to be not far
at all.
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