RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Recent DNA tests on decades-old evidence do not support the innocence of a man serving life for sexual assaults, Norfolk authorities said Thursday.
Norfolk prosecutors were reviewing the convictions of three people after results from a massive statewide post-conviction DNA testing project cast doubt on their guilt. Each of the three was excluded as a contributor to DNA evidence left behind at the scenes of the crimes, which date back to the ’70s and ’80s.
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Norfolk Commonwealth’s Attorney spokeswoman Amanda Howie said Thursday that prosecutors have determined that the tests in one of the cases do not clear the defendant because the results are not tied to the crimes for which he was convicted. The tests are from crimes in which he was only a suspect, Howie said.
Howie did not release the defendant’s identity.
Prosecutors continue to investigate test results for two other defendants in Norfolk and one in Carroll County.
A law that took effect July 1 required the Virginia Department of Forensic Science to disclose the DNA results of more than 70 persons convicted of crimes in which the old biological evidence retained in their files did not implicate them. The law allowed the department to withhold results from the public if prosecutors felt releasing them would hinder the investigation into whether someone was wrongfully convicted.
Prosecutors in Norfolk and Carroll County withheld test results involving four defendants. The Department of Forensic Science originally said the results involved five defendants, but those numbers were incorrect, Howie said.
Since 2001, a dozen men were found to have been wrongfully convicted using the evidence saved in cases from 1973 to 1988, before DNA testing was widely used.
The department then discovered that a serologist had preserved old swabs of evidence. After tests on the old evidence cleared five men, then-Gov. Mark Warner ordered testing completed on all appropriate old cases. The department has tested hundreds of cases in which someone was convicted.
Since then, seven more people have been cleared.
In each case in which the new test results do not match the person convicted, the department sends results to local prosecutors and law enforcement officials, but it was left up to the agencies whether to do anything with the new information.
Concerned that they may not be aggressively pursuing potential innocence cases, the General Assembly passed a law requiring the departments to make available through open records requests the results in those cases in which the convicted person was excluded as a source of the DNA.
In many cases, the exclusions do not prove innocence. For instance, someone convicted of murder may not match the DNA from semen left in the case, but the person may not have been accused of raping the victim.
