Man falsley imprisoned for 19 years, attorney's claim they never saw the DNA report.
North Carolina's district attorneys assured the public last week that there is no need to worry about the outcomes of blood cases cited in an audit of the State Bureau of Investigation in August.
There's no question of the guilt of any of the defendants, they said.
Chris Foye begs to disagree. Foye, who has spent 19 years in prison, said he pleaded to charges in a murder he didn't commit rather than risk the death penalty in a trial in Kinston.
Foye didn't know that the SBI had identified another man's DNA in the victim's panties, information that would have changed how his lawyers handled the case. He didn't admit his guilt but acknowledged there was evidence that could have led to his conviction.
"I absolutely never saw any report about DNA," said William Gerrans, one of Foye's lawyers. "If I had, I would have never let Chris plead."
Foye's case and others call into doubt the prosecutors' assurances that there is no need to worry about last year's independent audit, commissioned by Attorney General Roy Cooper, which found that the SBI crime lab withheld or misreported blood test results in 229 cases. The SBI said this week that it has identified an additional 74 cases with similar problems.
In Foye's case, the SBI failed to report that a confirmatory test for blood was inconclusive. But the auditors also pointed out the DNA evidence that shocked Foye's lawyers, which should have been turned over as evidence helpful to Foye.
In dealing with cases from the audit, district attorneys will be forced to re-examine old cases and revisit evidence in addition to missteps in the serology unit at the SBI lab. In some cases, such as Foye's, district attorneys will be asked to defend decisions made decades ago on evidence that is shaky, discredited or lost to time.
Link:
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2011/03/27/2175573/lawyers-never-saw-dna-report-let.html