In early posts, I have discussed the musings of Lake County Prosecutor Mike Mermel in his efforts to explain away DNA in order to preserve arrests or convictions built solely on the basis of confessions of questionable reliability. Although Lake County prosecutors have ignored DNA results in three cases -- Juan Rivera, Bennie Starks, and Jerry Hobbs -- Mermel's public comments in the wake of DNA evidence in Hobbs's case were the most bizarre I had heard until last week. But first, in the spirit of the Olympic Games, let's lay out the bronze, silver, and gold medal winners for explaining away DNA.
Bronze Medal goes to Bob Benjamin, the former "spokesperson" for the Cook County State's Attorney's Office (CCSAO) in the case of Anthony Moody. Chicago's Englewood neighborhood was victimized by multiple serial killers and rapists in the 1990's. Women engaged in "high risk" activity (drugs and sex) were being strangled and raped at unprecedented levels. The Chicago police botched the investigations for years and obtained numerous false confessions to crimes that were later linked to a man named Andre Crawford by DNA evidence and to other men, including Earl Mack, Hubert Geralds, etc. The police coerced a confession from Moody to killing his girlfriend. When DNA evidence later found small traces of Moody's DNA in the victim but large amounts of DNA of a serial killer, the CCSAO reduced Moody's charges to aggravated battery in order to preserve a conviction.
When pressed by Tribune reporter Vanessa Gazari as to why Moody was still being charged, Bob Benjamin stated: [Such scenarios] "happen all the time....particularly in sexual attacks. A woman is lying there helpless [and] another predator comes along and sees an opportunity and takes it." Perhaps the bronze should be shared with the New York City Police Department officers who claimed the exact same thing when DNA evidence proved that Matias Reyes alone raped and beat the Central Park Jogger within an inch of her life. In the wake of the DNA evidence, police officers suggested that the boys had beaten here and left her helpless and Reyes, an opportunist had sex with her as she lay close to death in a wooded area.
Silver medal (almost a tie with the gold medal winners from Colorado) goes to Mike Mermel.
Lake County's Major Crimes Task Force arrested Jerry Hobbs, a recently released prisoner from the Texas Department of Corrections for the murders of his 9 year old daughter and her friend. According to a short confession, Hobbs said he was angry at his daughter for disobeying rules and "lost it", stabbing her and her friend repeatedly with a "potato knife" he took from one of the victims who pulled it on him. There was no mention of any sexual assault in Hobbs' confession. Three years later, however, semen was found on Hobb's daughters clothes and in several of her body cavities. It wasn't Hobbs's semen. Faced with this evidence, most prosecutors would have packed their bags and worked overtime to find out the identity of the semen donor. Not Mermel. His take was that the girl must have rubbed up against some semen while playing in the woods, a place where teenagers are constantly going to have sex. "It is such a goofy logic leap [that] because somewhere in her life she came into contact with a sperm cell it means she was sexually assaulted. To take this leap that this is the identity of the mystery killer, I don't know where everybody gets this idea." Mermel went on, "If you swabbed the outhouse handles, it would not be unusual for a little girl to get that sperm...If you swabbed any tops of things like a remote control or your average shopping cart handle, you'd be surprised what you'd find."
The Gold Medal, however, must now go to District Attorney Carol Chambers from Douglas County, Colorado. Douglas County residents were panicked by a series of break-ins last summer, mostly burglaries and trespasses. Panic rose to a fever pitch when one of these crimes involved the alleged groping of an eight year old girl. Resident who glimpsed the perpetrator described him as a white male in his 40's, stocky, with brown hair. Neighbors sighed with relief when the local Sheriff announced the arrest of 19 year old Tyler Sanchez, a mentally disabled and hearing impaired teen, who was picked up in the neighborhood and who "confessed" to the break-ins and the sexual assault. Sanchez, who was thin and had red hair, admitted to the crime, after 17 hours of interrogation (38 hours in custody with little sleep or food) , soon recanted his confession. His lawyer sought DNA testing of the young girl's underwear and two male profiles were found, one belonging to the girl's father and another belonging to another identified male. Neither belonged to Sanchez. The DNA came from epithelial skin cells and the profiles were developed from a state lab. When Denver Press columnist Susan Greene (one of the authors of the Post's landmark series "Trashing the Truth" about the routine destruction of forensic evidence) asked DA Chambers about the DNA, here is what she was told:
"With the low-cut jeans that girls wear, she could have picked up anyone's DNA off any surface her panties touched while they may have been riding above her pants. I hate those low-cut pants....Depending on how long she had been wearing those panties and where, they could have rubbed up against the back of her chair in school, at restaurant, the couch at home that someone else may have been sitting on, a bus seat, someone's toilet seat if she did not pull them down far enough -- there are many ways to get unknown DNA on clothing. Another kid could have snapped the elastic on her underwear -- kids do that sort of thing."
Admittedly, skin cells are not as damning evidence as semen but the lengths to which Chambers goes to explain away skin cell evidence is stunning, especially since Colorado is still reeling from the DNA exoneration of Timothy Masters, an exoneration which was based on such testing. Here's hoping that as the case goes to trial, Chambers and her colleagues take a close look at the confession and notice the obvious warning signs of a false confession -- the suspect's youth, low intelligence, the length of the interrogation (17 hours is excessive even for a murder case)--closely analyze whether or not the details of the crime came from the suspect or were fed to the suspect by police and whether the details could be independently corroborated by other evidence.
Police claimed that Sanchez fit the profile and that his latest attack was part of a pattern of escalating behavior. Not so, according to Greene. Sanchez's record included a deferred judgment in a juvenile graffiti case and a probation violation when he was caught with alcohol on his breath.....
