Prior DNA Test Not ‘Definitive’ If New Testing Method Can Detect Information Old Test Could Not

Case Returned to Trial Court to Determine if Other Criteria for Granting New Test Also Met

2009-0605. State v. Prade, Slip Opinion No. 2010-Ohio-1842.
Summit App. No. 24296, 2009-Ohio-704. Judgment of the court of appeals reversed, and cause remanded to the trial court.
Pfeifer, Lundberg Stratton, Lanzinger, and Cupp, JJ., concur.
Delaney and O'Donnell, JJ., dissent.
Brown, C.J., not participating.
Patricia A. Delaney, J., of the Fifth Appellate District, sitting for O’Connor, J.
Opinion: http://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/rod/docs/pdf/0/2010/2010-Ohio-1842.pdf


(May 4, 2010) The Supreme Court of Ohio ruled today that under R.C. 2953.74, a state law that allows prison inmates to obtain new DNA testing of evidence from their trials under certain conditions, a prior DNA test is not “definitive” when a new testing method can detect information that could not be detected by the prior DNA test.

Applying that holding to the case of former Akron police captain Douglas Prade, who is currently serving a life sentence for the 1997 murder of his ex-wife, the Court overruled decisions of the Summit County Court of Common Pleas and 9th District Court of Appeals that denied Prade’s request for new testing of crime scene evidence on the basis that “a prior definitive DNA test” had been conducted at the time of his trial. Today’s decision did not order the trial court to approve Prade’s request for new testing, but overruled its finding that a 1998 DNA test performed on the victim’s clothing was definitive, and directed the trial court to conduct further proceedings.

Writing for a 4-2 majority of the Court, Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton emphasized that today’s decision does not address “the issue of whether to allow new DNA testing in cases where prior tests provided a match or other meaningful information, and an inmate is simply asking for a new test using the latest techniques. Rather, our holding is limited to situations in which advances in DNA testing have made it possible to learn information about DNA evidence that could not even be detected at the earlier trial.”

Under the statute at issue in the case, a trial court has discretion to approve an inmate’s request for postconviction DNA testing of trial evidence only if 1) there has not been “a prior definitive DNA test” performed on that evidence, and 2) the inmate shows that DNA test results excluding him or her as the source of genetic material from the crime scene “would have been outcome determinative at the trial stage of the case.”

Prade was charged with fatally shooting his ex-wife, Dr. Margo Prade, while she sat in a van outside her medical office. Among the physical evidence introduced at his 1998 trial was a bite mark that the killer made on Dr. Prade’s arm through her lab coat and blouse when she apparently attempted to defend herself. Although DNA tests were performed on the sleeve of the lab coat over the bite mark, blood from the victim’s wounds had covered that area of the sleeve and technicians using the best testing method available at that time, called polymerase chain reaction or PCR testing, reported that the only DNA they were able to detect on the sleeve was that of the victim. Expert witnesses called by Prade and by the state offered conflicting testimony regarding whether the bite mark left on the victim’s skin was compatible with Prade’s teeth. He was subsequently convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

In 2003 the General Assembly enacted legislation allowing postconviction DNA testing of trial evidence. Prade twice applied to the trial court seeking follow-up testing of the lab coat. His original request in 2004 was denied based on the court’s finding that the tests conducted at the time of his trial had definitively excluded Prade as a source of DNA on the lab coat, and therefore any new test that excluded him as a source would not have changed the outcome of his case. Prade filed a second request in 2008. The trial court again ruled that he was not eligible for new DNA testing under R.C. 2953.74 because a prior definitive test had been performed. On review, the 9th District Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court’s decision.

In today’s Supreme Court decision, Justice Stratton wrote: “Because defendant was excluded as a contributor to the DNA that was typed in this case, the lower courts concluded that the prior DNA tests done in 1998 were definitive. However, the only information that the DNA testing on the lab coat revealed was that Dr. Prade’s blood was present on her lab coat. The state’s expert agreed that the 1998 DNA ‘test results [did] not give [him] any information about the killer’ and that ‘the bite mark show[ed] [him] Margo Prade’s DNA only.’ Therefore, the testing excluded defendant only in the sense that the DNA found was not his, because it was the victim’s. But the ‘exclusion’ excluded everyone other than the victim in that the victim’s DNA overwhelmed the killer’s DNA due to the limitations of the 1998 testing methods. Therefore, the exclusion was meaningless, and the test cannot be deemed to have been definitive.”

Citing testimony by the quality assurance administrator of the state’s own DNA testing laboratory, Justice Stratton wrote that recent advances in DNA testing techniques, including the development of Y-STR testing that “ignores” female DNA in a test sample and detects only male DNA, now make it possible for new testing to do what the PCR methodology available in 1998 could not: identify and test small amounts of genetic material from a male even when it has been commingled with a much greater amount of female DNA such as the blood stains on Dr. Prade’s lab coat. “Thus,” wrote Justice Stratton, “new DNA testing methods are now able to provide new information that was not able to be detected at the time of defendant’s trial. We hold that a prior DNA test is not ‘definitive’ within the meaning of R.C. 2953.74(A) when a new DNA testing method can detect information that could not be detected by the prior DNA test.”

Although the Court’s holding overruled the trial court and 9th District’s primary basis for denying new DNA testing in the case, the Court remanded the case to the trial court to consider the second step of the analysis: whether the new DNA testing would be outcome determinative (i.e., whether there is a strong probability that no reasonable factfinder would have found the inmate guilty of that offense) pursuant to R.C. 2953.74(B) and 2953.71(L).

She wrote: “Neither court below considered R.C. 2953.74(B) and 2953.71(L) in detail because they each resolved the issue of definitiveness against the inmate – an issue that must be decided in an inmate’s favor before the question of whether additional testing would be outcome-determinative has any relevance. Because we reverse on the issue of the definitiveness of the prior testing, the trial court must be given the opportunity to consider outcome-determinativeness in detail as the statutes envision. Therefore, rather than applying R.C. 2953.74(B)(2) and 2953.71(L) at this point in the case, we remand the cause to the trial court for that court to consider whether the new DNA testing would be outcome-determinative.”

In conclusion, Justice Stratton emphasized that today’s decision does not address “the issue of whether to allow new DNA testing in cases where prior tests provided a match or other meaningful information, and an inmate is simply asking for a new test using the latest techniques. Rather, our holding is limited to situations in which advances in DNA testing have made it possible to learn information about DNA evidence that could not even be detected at the earlier trial.”

Justice Stratton’s opinion was joined by Justices Paul E. Pfeifer, Judith Ann Lanzinger and Robert R. Cupp.

Justice Terrence O’Donnell entered a dissenting opinion that was joined by Judge Patricia A. Delaney of the 5th District Court of Appeals, who sat in place of Justice Maureen O’Connor. Justice O’Donnell disagreed with the majority’s holding that a prior DNA test performed on evidence in an inmate’s case is not “definitive” within the meaning of R.C. 2953.74(A) if scientific advances since the inmate’s trial would allow a new test to detect genetic material not identified in the prior test.

He wrote: “(N)either the plain meaning of the word ‘definitive’ nor any other provision of the postconviction DNA testing statute authorizes the trial court to consider advances in testing technology to determine whether prior DNA tests were definitive. Moreover, if trial courts began to consider advances in testing technology, no test would ever be considered definitive, because the standards would continue to evolve and never reveal a final result. The finality of a conviction could therefore be undermined each time a new method of examination or technological advance occurred, even if the biological evidence had already been the subject of multiple postconviction DNA examinations. The General Assembly intended to preserve final judgments and never provided for the constant reexamination of DNA samples based on scientific advances.”

Chief Justice Eric Brown did not participate in the Court’s deliberations or decision in the case.

Contacts
David B. Alden, 216.586.7121, for Douglas Prade.

Richard S. Kasay, 330.643.2800, for the state and Summit County prosecutor’s office.

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