GIST: "It looked bad for homeless alcoholic Lukis Anderson when DNA evidence tied him to a Silicon Valley millionaire's 2012 murder. But when Anderson's lawyer proved that paramedics who had treated him on the streets of downtown San Jose inadvertently transferred his DNA to the Monte Sereno murder scene, she didn't just clear him. The case is believed to be the first in California and perhaps the nation in which DNA evidence was shown to have falsely placed an innocent person at the scene of a crime, lending credibility to defense lawyers who struggle to convince jurors to view DNA evidence more skeptically. "Before, we just had hypotheticals, stuff that DAs would say was smoke and mirrors," said Deputy Public Defender Kelley Kulick, who handled the groundbreaking case. "Now, there is a case to support it."........ Kulick pursued every avenue to prove Anderson had nothing to do with the crime, eventually discovering medical records that show on the night Kumra died, Anderson was at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, where he had been taken by ambulance after passing out drunk in downtown San Jose. His DNA turned up at the murder scene only because paramedics inadvertently transferred it there, via a simple oxygen-monitoring probe they'd clipped first onto his finger and then onto the dead man's. Prosecutors dropped the charges after examining a dossier Kulick put together, interviewing the paramedics and hospital personnel, and reviewing videotape of the crime scene to make sure the paramedics had really treated both men. Anderson walked out of jail five months later.........But the Anderson episode is shifting the legal landscape by forcing the prosecution in cases that rest heavily on DNA to make doubly sure there's plenty of supporting evidence, Chase said. "It'"s an absolute now," Chase said. "You can't make a case solely on contact DNA."
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