PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "The veteran defense lawyer received five such letters on Monday for five different clients he represented during that time. Among them was Robert Chavira, convicted in 2012 for a series of brazen armed robberies at Fashion Valley Mall and Barona Resort & Casino. Chavira was given one of the longest sentences in county court history — 450 years to life, plus another 288 years. Throughout the case Chavira insisted he was innocent, and a co-defendant who testified at the trial said Chavira was innocent. Among the evidence against him was DNA found on a ski mask whose profile matched Chavira’s, Armstrong said. Neck said that his unit is open to hearing from lawyers or defendants who pleaded guilty but believe they too may be innocent, either because of the DNA issue or any other."
STORY: "San Diego DA Review Identified 254 Cases That Could Be Re-examined Because of DNA Issue," by reporter Greg Moran, published by The San Diego Union-Tribune on January 26, 2018.
GIST: "The District Attorney’s Office has alerted lawyers for more than 250 defendants who were convicted over a 13-year period that their conviction relied in part on using a now-discredited DNA interpretation method — and they may have a chance at a re-examination of their case. The notice, a two-page letter from interim District Attorney Summer Stephan sent to lawyers starting Monday, could have the effect of changing guilty verdicts handed down by juries at trials from 2003 through 2016. The office sent out letters on 254 cases, all involving convictions of either violent or serious felonies. The letters are not an acknowledgment that the convictions are invalid, or that prosecutors even suspect there are problems with them, and don’t precisely spell out how a case wil be handled. Stephan wrote that in “appropriate circumstances” some of the DNA matching conclusions could be re-calculated, or some evidence — if it still exists — may be retested. She pledged to work with defense lawyers “in any case in which our confidence in the conviction is undermined.” That does not mean that a different DNA result will automatically reverse the conviction, in cases in which there is other evidence of guilt such as eyewitness testimony or other physical evidence. At issue is how DNA that is a mixture of more than one person can be interpreted by crime labs and analysts. In 2010, the leading DNA forensic science working group in the country revised the guidelines for interpreting such samples. The new guidelines were more conservative. Samples previously deemed to have the DNA of a suspect would now be considered to be inconclusive. Also, the key DNA statistic that gives the odds a person chosen at random would match the mixture sample by chance — known as the "Combined Probability of Inclusion" — would be lower. Both changes favored defendants. The San Diego Police Department crime lab adopted the new standards in 2011, and informed the DA’s office about the change in a memo. The criminal defense community was never formally notified, and did not generally know of the change until 2016, when a lawyer representing a San Diego man serving a life sentence turned up the memo detailing the change in interpretation while working on an appeal. The cases selected by the office fill certain criteria only: defendants who were charged with a violent or serious felony and went to a jury trial where a type of DNA evidence — known as a mixture sample, containing genetic material from more than one person — was used. Also, they had to be still in custody. The criteria excludes people who pleaded guilty before a trial — which constitute the vast majority of cases in the criminal justice system. In 2016, 92 percent of all cases in San Diego were resolved by a guilty plea and not a trial. Also, those who were sentenced and have since been released are not included. The letter is the product of an exhaustive review initiated by prosecutors about two months ago of cases that ended in a jury trial conviction in San Diego courts between 2003 and 2016, said Deputy District Attorney Brent Neck, head of the office’s Conviction Review Unit. That review identified 1,500 cases, winnowed to the 254 that filled the criteria. The move comes about three months after a San Diego Superior Court judge’s decision to overturn the 2011 murder conviction of Florencio Jose Dominguez based largely on the change in the interpretation guidelines, and the fact that the defense lawyer was not informed of the change at the lab. Under the new standards Dominguez would be excluded as a source of DNA on a bloody glove that was key evidence in the case. Lawyer Matthew Speredelozzi discovered in 2014 that change had been made. He also learned that the DA’s office was told about the change in 2011 but did not widely inform the defense community. In August 2016 Dumanis sent out a letter to lawyers informing them of the change and inviting them to call the office if they believed they had an affected client. Only one lawyer responded, Neck said. After the conviction was overturned last October, Stephan, who was appointed in June to fill the term of Dumanis who resigned to run for a seat as a county supervisor, ordered prosecutors to do a review of cases. “Summer wanted us to be proactive on this, so that’s what we did,” Neck said. Speredelozzi, who is preparing to defend Dominguez in a retrial, was skeptical. “I get the feeling they are doing this not because they want to review all these cases, but because they want to fix the PR problem they had with the Dominguez case,” he said. Chief Public Defender Randy Mize said he expects his office to get many of the cases, including those for defendants whose attorneys are retired, deceased or can’t be located. “We’re going to devote the resources we need to these cases and determine if the evidence is such that the cases need re-investigating,” he said. Letters are also being sent to private criminal defense lawyers such as Kerry Armstrong. The veteran defense lawyer received five such letters on Monday for five different clients he represented during that time. Among them was Robert Chavira, convicted in 2012 for a series of brazen armed robberies at Fashion Valley Mall and Barona Resort & Casino. Chavira was given one of the longest sentences in county court history — 450 years to life, plus another 288 years. Throughout the case Chavira insisted he was innocent, and a co-defendant who testified at the trial said Chavira was innocent. Among the evidence against him was DNA found on a ski mask whose profile matched Chavira’s, Armstrong said. Neck said that his unit is open to hearing from lawyers or defendants who pleaded guilty but believe they too may be innocent, either because of the DNA issue or any other. Prosecutors in Orange County have made a similar effort, Neck said, to offer to review old cases with mixture DNA. Despite the fact that the guidelines changed years ago, other prosecutors in California have not taken similar steps. Jessica Brand, the legal director of the criminal justice reform group the Fair Punishment Project, said the case review was good, though it also fell short. “This is putting people on notice that they have a case, and the DA acknowledging there is a problem has some value,” Brand said. She said it’s problematic that people who pleaded guilty — sometimes in the face of the DNA evidence — are excluded. She noted that Stephan in the letter expresses confidence in the integrity of the verdicts and expects only a few cases would be affected. Brand faulted the office for not alerting defense lawyers in 2011 when they were informed in the memo that the guidelines had changed. “They did not make a good faith effort to disclose this in the first place,” she said."
The entire story can be found at:
https://www.forensicmag.com/news/2018/01/san-diego-da-review-identified-254-cases-could-be-re-examined-because-dna-issue
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/c
