FAIRBANKS, Alaska — An Auburn, Maine, man who was discovered responsible within the 1993 sexual assault and homicide of an Alaska lady is difficult the constitutionality of how his id was found by way of a relative’s DNA.
Steven H. Downs Androscoggin County Jail
Steven Harris Downs, 49, was sentenced two years ago to 75 years in prison — 67 years for murder and eight years for sexual assault — by a Fairbanks Superior Courtroom decide after a three-week jury trial.
Downs’ court-appointed lawyer, Emily Jura of the Alaska Public Defender Agency, filed a 69-page temporary Might 17 outlining her three factors of enchantment.
First amongst them is that Downs by no means volunteered to offer a pattern of his DNA, and genetic family tree databases have been searched and not using a warrant.
The tactic by which Downs was recognized as a suspect was a violation of his Fourth Modification safety towards unreasonable search and an infringement on his affordable expectation of privateness, Jura wrote.
Downs’ lead trial lawyer, James Howaniec of Lewiston, Maine, first raised the DNA consent subject in a pretrial movement in an effort to maintain that proof from being shared with jurors.
The decide denied his movement.
Howaniec raised the difficulty once more after Downs’ conviction.
Again, the judge rejected that argument.
Howaniec mentioned Thursday that he expects Downs’ case might set a authorized precedent.
“We expect this is a matter that’s going to work its method as much as the U.S. Supreme Courtroom,” Howaniec mentioned.
Although Downs’ case isn’t the primary time a defendant has been identified as a suspect through the genetic profile of a relative, most of these circumstances by no means went to trial.
That’s what occurred within the case of the Golden State Killer, Joseph DeAngelo, who pleaded responsible to the homicide of 13 individuals and the sexual assault of roughly 50 girls in California in the course of the Seventies and ’80s.
If the Alaska Courtroom of Appeals have been to rule in favor of Downs, his case can be dismissed, Howaniec mentioned
.
“It’s an attention-grabbing confluence of the legislation and science and the way it’s ever-evolving,” Howaniec mentioned.
At subject is the style during which police matched Downs to DNA that was collected within the type of a swab of a minute quantity of semen discovered inside physique of Sophie Sergie, 20, of Pitkas Level, Alaska, whose reason for loss of life was decided to be a .22-caliber gunshot to the again of her head.
Sergie, who’d beforehand been a scholar at College of Alaska Fairbanks, had returned for a dental appointment and she or he had been visiting pals on campus.
Her physique was discovered on April 26, 1993, within the bathtub space of the ladies’s lavatory on the second ground of Bartlett Corridor on the college.
Downs was a freshman at the moment, dwelling on the third ground of that dormitory.
DNA EVIDENCE
Alaska State Police had sent that DNA evidence, along with DNA evidence collected from the scenes of cold cases, to a DNA testing firm which, in flip, despatched it to Parabon NanoLabs in Virginia in an effort to create a profile of the homicide suspect.
The genetic data derived by Parabon from the crime scene DNA proof was then offered to a Florida firm known as GEDmatch, which makes use of DNA data submitted by subscribers of family tree DNA testing providers, corresponding to Ancestry.com, who give their permission for his or her DNA profiles for use by GEDmatch and shared with legislation enforcement to create a database from which overlapping DNA profiles might be decided.
GEDmatch returned outcomes that recognized anybody of their database who shared vital quantities of DNA with the unknown pattern given to Parabon by Alaska State Police.
That’s how the DNA pattern offered to the industrial family tree web site by Downs’ aunt finally pointed to him, by way of genetic family tree evaluation.
Howaniec famous Thursday that one of many co-founders of GEDmatch had testified at Downs’ suppression listening to in 2021 that “it was by no means their intention after they based the corporate that this proof can be accessed by legislation enforcement and used as a part of forensic investigations.”
In actual fact, someday after the Golden State Killer case, together with plenty of different circumstances that used related genetic family tree evaluation, GEDmatch “really modified its insurance policies to require that warrants be required earlier than they’ll launch any of (their) data to legislation enforcement,” Howaniec mentioned.
Jura wrote that Downs’ conviction ought to be overturned as a result of he by no means gave his consent to have his DNA collected and examined.
Jura challenges the gathering and testing of Downs’ DNA, calling it an unconstitutional search.
Sergie’s chilly case was revived in 2018 when the DNA of Downs’ aunt seemed to be a random hit to the semen present in Sergie, the one bodily proof linking Downs to the crime.
His aunt had beforehand submitted her DNA to a family tree web site, nevertheless it was later analyzed for blood kinfolk towards DNA proof collected from the crime scene almost three many years earlier.
Jura wrote that Downs “had a subjective expectation of privateness in these shared segments of his personal genetic code” with these of his aunt.
It was solely after evaluation of his aunt’s DNA that Downs was recognized as a potential suspect and a search warrant for his DNA was secured and executed.
“Courts usually presume people have a subjective expectation of privateness in their very own DNA, at the least till they voluntarily relinquish it to legislation enforcement,” Jura wrote.
The decide had denied Downs’ pretrial movement to suppress the DNA proof and it was introduced by prosecutors at trial.
WRONG GUN
One other level of Jura’s enchantment argues that the decide shouldn’t have allowed proof at trial that Downs owned a .22-caliber revolver in 2019.
In Jura’s temporary, she wrote that Downs had filed a movement earlier than trial in search of to exclude proof associated to his possession of a .22-caliber Harrington & Richardson revolver that was recovered throughout a police search of his residence in 2019.
“Particularly, Downs argued that proof of weapons he possessed in 2019 had no relevance or conditional relevance as to whether he dedicated a homicide in 1993, was extra prejudicial that probative and amounted to impermissible propensity proof,” Jura wrote.
At an evidentiary listening to, prosecutors introduced proof that urged Downs stored a .22-caliber revolver within the dorms with him in 1993, when he was a scholar on the College of Alaska Fairbanks.
Downs denied having a .22-caliber gun on the time of Sergie’s homicide and mentioned in 2019 that he had purchased his .22-caliber H&R pistol just a few years earlier from a gun vendor in Livermore who had marketed in a neighborhood journal.
Ballistics specialists testified at trial that the slug recovered on the crime scene was too broken for comparability to a particular gun.
ALTERNATIVE SUSPECT
In her third level of enchantment, Jura wrote that the reported confession of an alternate suspect ought to have been allowed into proof at trial.
Kenneth Moto had attended the faculty on the identical time Sergie’s was murdered, Jura wrote.
Police questioned him twice as a suspect or individual of curiosity and there was proof supporting a connection of Moto to the homicide, Jura wrote.
However, Moto had been excluded because the supply of the DNA present in Sergie’s vaginal swabs on the crime scene, although his fingerprints hadn’t been examined or excluded, Jura wrote
Moto had testified at trial, denying he had killed Sergie. He additionally denied telling his sister, Karen Moto, that he had killed Sergie; Karen Moto died earlier than Downs’ trial and Downs had requested the trial courtroom to introduce her 2009 statements to police that her brother had confessed to her that he had murdered Sergie.
By excluding proof of Moto’s confession, the decide violated Downs’ constitutional proper to due course of, Jura wrote.
Howaniec mentioned Thursday that he and different members of Downs’ protection staff “have been very involved that an harmless man was wrongly convicted on very tenuous proof. There have been many elements about this case that we really feel raised due course of issues.”
He raised these issues after Downs was convicted, however the trial decide rejected them.
Associated Tales
