6-Aug-2024

Ohio v. Myers – Ignoring data could not stop exoneration

The crime was horrific – a railroad spike murder near an abandoned railroad track in Xenia, Ohio. But was the death-row defendant’s DNA on the spike? If not, could that forensic fact have changed the verdict? The judge held a post-conviction hearing to decide.

The crime lab had found the DNA data to be uninterpretable, reporting “Due to the limited data obtained, no conclusions can be made on the minor alleles.” But using all the data, TrueAllele forged ahead to statistically exclude the defendant with a “one over a billion billion” match statistic. Creatively, the prosecutor argued that since old, failed ways of looking at DNA data don’t work, the data itself must be unreliable. No new science allowed. The judge did not agree with this specious reasoning. He wrote:

“Herein lies the crux of this case: is one DNA method reliable enough to undermine another? More specifically, is the Defendant's newly discovered DNA evidence -- which purportedly excludes the Defendant's presence at the crime scene - sufficiently reliable to undermine the integrity of the trial verdict? The short answer is "yes." Advances in DNA technology over more than 25 years are unrefuted.”

“The newly discovered evidence [gives] a strong probability that the jury would have reached a different verdict had the new evidence been available at trial. The new [TrueAllele] evidence clearly supports the Defendant's trial defense that another male committed the offense, and that the Defendant was not present. The DNA evidence makes this defense exponentially more credible. The Defendant's motion for a new trial must be granted.”