BACKGROUND: From an Idaho Press story by reporter Tommy Simmons which ran on May 24, 2019. For full background, including the incredible role played by Dr. Greg Hampikian and his colleagues at the then fledgling Idaho Innocence Project read the entire story at the link below: "Sometime between 12:45 a.m. and 1:15 a.m. June 13, 1996, police believe, a man broke into Angie Dodge’s apartment in Idaho Falls and fatally cut her throat. There was also evidence he’d raped her. At the time, officers hypothesized multiple people had been involved in the crime, according to a recent statement from the Idaho Falls Police Department. In January 1997, they began to believe Chris Tapp, then 20 years old, was one of them. Brian Dripps lived across the street from Angie Dodge. He had told police he’d been so drunk on the night of her murder he couldn’t remember any of the people or vehicles he may have seen or interacted with, according to an affidavit, but he was not investigated further. Police kept investigating Tapp, even when they learned his DNA did not match that found at the scene. They still believed he may have been involved in the crime, because they thought it had been committed by multiple people. Tapp confessed his involvement in January 1997 — a confession he later tried to rescind and later said was coerced. Police asked him for the names of other people who may have been involved. None of the information he gave them led to any viable suspect, according to the affidavit. With a withdrawn confession and a lack of a DNA match, a Bonneville County jury in May 1998 convicted Tapp of the rape and murder of Dodge. A key witness in the case against Tapp — who had been 18 years old at the time — recanted her testimony this week, claiming she, too, was coerced by police and fed information, according to the Post Register. In December 1998, a judge sentenced Tapp to prison for 30 years to life and ruled he would be eligible for parole after 20 years. The Idaho Falls Police Department had never matched the DNA evidence taken from Angie Dodge’s apartment on the night she died. All that officers knew was that it did not belong to Tapp. About 12 to 13 years ago, an attorney working with a Boise State student on another Idaho Innocence Project case suggested they look into Tapp's case, Hampikian said. The Idaho Innocence Project was still in its infancy and working on its first cases — that of Sarah Pearce, who was convicted in a brutal attack of a Canyon County motorist and later released after the project got involved. Tapp's case became the Idaho Innocence Project's second. None of the DNA evidence in the case was tested at Boise State, for legal reasons, Hampikian said, but the project worked with the Idaho Falls Police Department nonetheless. The department contracted with a private company, Parabon NanoLabs, ultimately using the genealogical techniques project members told them about, in order to secure Dripps’ arrest. The technique is a new one, and it's controversial, but it has been effective at solving cold cases across the country. Hampikian said the Idaho Falls Police Department was the first department to use it. Scientists use the DNA evidence to build a profile of the suspect. They then cross-reference that profile with other records, such as Census data, vital data, newspaper archives, and information publicly available through ancestry websites, according to the Idaho Falls Police Department. Once they pinpoint a likely ancestor of the DNA sample's owner, they build a family tree using more records. That, eventually, creates a pool of suspects. After that, police collected evidence "surreptitiously" — in this case, they waited until Dripps tossed a cigarette out a car window, then tested the DNA on the cigarette butt. It matched the DNA collected in 1996 from Angie Dodge's apartment..................Meanwhile, Tapp remained in prison. Back then, in Idaho, as long as they had an “actual claim of innocence,” an inmate could ask for additional DNA testing to help prove their innocence — but only if they did so within a year of their conviction. Tapp hadn’t done that, and since he started his sentence in 1998, forensic DNA had evolved. Additionally, Idaho, alongside Mississippi, had some of the most restrictive laws governing post-conviction DNA tests. Such cases are why current Ada County Commissioner Rick Visser, who was then serving as the Idaho Innocence Project’s legal director, wanted to change the law......... Gov. Butch Otter signed it into law the first day it appeared on his desk. That law, Visser said, “would open the door for Chris Tapp to make that claim (for DNA testing) 17, 18 years after the murder.”..............Prosecutors offered to reverse the rape charge against Tapp, because the DNA evidence from the rape kit did not belong to him. They also asked the judge to amend Tapp’s sentence to “time served” — meaning he’d served the appropriate amount of time in prison — but they did not drop the murder conviction.For a prisoner, being confronted with such a deal is “mind-blowing,” Hampikian said.At the time prosecutors offered Tapp the deal, he had been in prison for about two decades. Dripps had not been arrested, and there were no DNA matches in the case.Tapp took the deal and was released in March 2017.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY: Greg Hampikian of the Idaho Innocence Project, which helped Tapp and Fain, said the lack of financial resources for people cleared of crimes concerns him. “I love doing the work that I do,” he told lawmakers. “I tremble when someone gets out""
Greg Hampikian.
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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "
STORY: "Wrongly convicted men testify before Idaho lawmakers," by Associated Press Reporter Keith Ridler, published on February 11, 2020.
PHOTO CAPTION: "Christopher Tapp, from left, Republican Rep. Doug Ricks and Charles Fain appeared before the Idaho House Judiciary, Rules and Administration Committee in Boise, Idaho, on Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2020, to testify in favor of legislation that would compensate the wrongly convicted. Tapp and Fain combined spent nearly 40 years in Idaho prisons for crimes they didn’t commit after being convicted of murder."
The entire story can be read at: https://www.idahostatesman.
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/
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FINAL
WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever
there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal
system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent
future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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