The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Appellate District released two decisions from Lorain County appeals on June 28, 2013. My summaries of these decisions appear below.
State v. Carlton, 2013-Ohio-2788 was a criminal appeal in which the trial court was affirmed. Mr. Carlton cited five assignments of error on appeal.
Mr. Carlton argued that the prosecutor's remarks during opening statement were a misstatement of the law and that even though his lawyer didn't object, the trial court committed plain error in not correcting the assistant prosecutor trying the case.
He also argued that his conviction was against the manifest weight of the evidence and that his motion under Crim. R. 28 should have been granted because the state failed to produce sufficient evidence in its case in chief.
He argued that the trial court erred in allowing in other acts evidence and that the trial court erred in its instructions by not requiring unanimity in the jury's verdicts. That assignment of error relied on an argument that the State had charged him with "multiple acts" while the State argued that it had charged him with "alternative means" of committing the crimes. The Court agreed with the State that the correct analysis was an "alternative means" analysis and not a "multiple acts" analysis. Judge Hensal's decision contains case citations from the Ohio Supreme Court on the "alternative means" versus "multiple acts" analysis and what each analysis requires.
Altercare, Inc. v. Clark, 2013-Ohio-2785 is a case in which both Altercare, inc. and its former employee, Clark, filed appeals from a decision of the Lorain County Common Pleas Court regarding the issue of spoliation of evidence.
Altercare had sued Clark for various causes of action related to her employment as its CEO and Clark had counterclaimed. Before litigation Clark's attorney had sent a letter to Altercare regarding a computer that Clark had used during her employment. Clark's attorney wanted the computer preserved or a mirror image made of its hard drive. During discovery it became apparent that Altercare had not preserved the computer's hard drive or made a mirror image of the hard drive.
The trial court sanctioned Altercare for this spoliation of evidence by dismissing all of its counts against Clark. It did not, however, grant Clark's request for judgment on her counterclaim. Altercare appealed and Clark cross-appealed. Clark, however, failed to submit a merit brief in support of her cross-appeal, so it was dismissed. The Court then affirmed the trial court's decisions regarding the dismissal of the Altercare complaint.
Judge Whitmore's opinion refers to the provision of Civ. R. 37 which concerns the preservation of electronically stored information, (ESI), and the factors that a trial court should consider when deciding to sanction a party for non-compliance.
Showing posts with label criminal trials. Show all posts
Showing posts with label criminal trials. Show all posts
Saturday, July 06, 2013
Friday, June 18, 2010
Court Clarifies When ‘Hearsay’ Evidence of Child’s Statements to Child Advocacy Interviewer Is Admissible
Ruling Distinguishes Between Statements Made for Medical, Forensic Purposes
State v. Arnold, Slip Opinion No. 2010-Ohio-2742.
Franklin App. No. 07AP-789, 2008-Ohio-3471. Judgment of the court of appeals affirmed in part and reversed in part, and cause remanded to the court of appeals.
Lundberg Stratton, O'Connor, Lanzinger, and Cupp, JJ., concur.
Pfeifer and O'Donnell, JJ., dissent.
Brown, C.J., not participating.
Opinion: http://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/rod/docs/pdf/0/2010/2010-Ohio-2742.pdf
(June 17, 2010) In a decision announced today, the Supreme Court of Ohio held that a child’s statements made to an interviewer at a child advocacy center for purposes of medical diagnosis and treatment are non-testimonial and therefore admissible evidence at trial. The Court held further, however, that statements made to an interviewer at a child advocacy center that serve primarily a forensic or investigatory purpose are testimonial in nature and therefore are inadmissible evidence at trial.
The Court’s 4-2 majority decision, authored by Justice Maureen O’Connor, partially affirmed and partially reversed a decision of the 10th District Court of Appeals, and remanded the case to that court for additional proceedings.
In December 2005, the mother of a 4-year-old Columbus girl identified as M.A. called police to report her suspicion that the child had been sexually assaulted that evening by Michael Arnold. The child was transported to an emergency room where a rape kit examination was performed. She was then sent home overnight. The following morning M.A. was taken to the Center for Child and Family Advocacy (CCFA), a special multidisciplinary unit for victims of child and domestic abuse located at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. Kerri Marshall, a social worker employed by CCFA, conducted an in-depth interview with M.A. outside the presence of her mother during which Marshall asked a number of questions about what had taken place between the child and Arnold. The purpose of Marshall’s interview was to “gather as much information as possible,” while only subjecting the child to one interview. Thus, the interview was viewed live via closed-circuit television by several observers in another room, including a police detective and a nurse practitioner. The entire interview was also recorded on a digital video disk. Following the interview, the nurse practitioner examined M.A. The nurse practitioner testified at trial that the interview guided her examination and enabled her to determine whether to conduct a genital examination and whether to test M.A. for sexually transmitted infection. During the examination, the nurse practitioner found two abrasions on M.A.’s hymen, which she testified were “diagnostic” of sexual abuse.
Based on M.A.’s statements during the CCFA interview and other evidence, Arnold was arrested and charged with two counts of rape of a child under the age of 10. The court determined that M.A. was unavailable to testify and be cross examined in court. Over Arnold’s objections, the trial court allowed the state to show the full video of M.A.’s interview with Marshall at the CCFA to the jury. Arnold was subsequently convicted on one count of child rape and sentenced to life in prison.
Arnold appealed, arguing that by admitting M.A.’s out-of-court statements into evidence without an opportunity for cross-examination, the trial court had violated his constitutional right to confront witnesses against him. The 10th District Court of Appeals upheld Arnold’s conviction, holding that M.A.’s out-of-court statements during the CCFA interview were admissible under an exception to the hearsay rule because they were not “testimonial” statements elicited through an interrogation by a police employee or agent, but rather were statements elicited by a social worker for the purpose of determining what additional medical examination and treatment the child might require. Arnold sought Supreme Court review of the case, and the Court agreed to determine whether, in a criminal prosecution, the admission of a child’s out-of-court statements made to an interviewer employed by a child advocacy center violates the defendant’s constitutional right to confront witnesses against him.
Writing for the majority in today’s decision, Justice O’Connor reviewed recent federal and state court decisions holding that hearsay evidence (statements made by a person who is not available for questioning or cross examination at trial) that is “testimonial” in nature cannot be admitted into evidence in a criminal prosecution without violating a defendant’s rights under the Confrontation Clause. Statements are “testimonial” in nature when the questioning that elicited the proffered statements was conducted by law enforcement personnel or an agent of the police, under non-emergency circumstances, and for the primary purpose of gathering information to aid in the prosecution of a suspected crime.
She also cited this court’s decisions in State v. Stahl (2006) and State v. Muttart (2007), holding that statements made by an adult rape victim in an interview with a nurse and by a child victim of sexual abuse in an interview with a social worker prior to receiving medical care were non-testimonial in nature, and thus admissible at trial, because the primary purpose for those interviews was to diagnose and provide proper medical treatment for the victim, not to gather information for a criminal prosecution.
In applying those precedents to Arnold’s case, Justice O’Connor noted that the victim interview conducted by Marshall at CCFA served the dual purposes of eliciting information necessary for proper medical diagnosis and care of M.A., and gathering forensic information necessary to investigate and potentially prosecute suspected criminal conduct. She wrote: “Certainly, some of the statements that M.A. made to Marshall primarily served a forensic or investigative purpose. Those statements include M.A.’s assertion that Arnold shut and locked the bedroom door before raping her; her descriptions of where her mother and brother were while she was in the bedroom with Arnold, of Arnold’s boxer shorts, of him removing them, and of what Arnold’s “pee-pee” looked like; and her statement that Arnold removed her underwear. These statements likely were not necessary for medical diagnosis or treatment. Rather, they related primarily to the state’s investigation. Marshall effectively acted as an agent of the police for the purpose of obtaining these statements. ... The primary purpose of that portion of the interview was not to meet an ongoing emergency but, rather, to further the state’s forensic investigation. Thus, these statements were testimonial in nature and their admission without a prior opportunity for cross-examination is prohibited by the Confrontation Clause.”
Justice O’Connor also observed, however, that other statements by M.A. elicited during her interview with Marshall at CCFA, including those describing the sexual conduct between Arnold and M.A., provided information that was necessary to diagnose and medically treat M.A. She wrote: “In eliciting these medically necessary statements, Marshall acted as an agent of the nurse practitioner who examined M.A., not of the investigating police officers. Because Marshall did not act as an agent of the police in obtaining these statements, they are not inadmissible. ... There is no basis in the law for concluding that Marshall’s dual capacity renders statements made by M.A. for the purpose of medical diagnosis and treatment inadmissible pursuant to the Confrontation Clause. Indeed, in Davis (v. Washington, 2006), the United States Supreme Court acknowledged that the same interview or interrogation might produce both testimonial and nontestimonial statements. As the court statedin Davis, ‘This presents no great problem.’ ‘[T]rial courts will recognize the point at which, for Sixth Amendment purposes, statements in response to interrogations become testimonial. Through in limine procedure, they should redact or exclude the portions of any statement that have become testimonial, as they do, for example, with unduly prejudicial portions of otherwise admissible evidence.’”
“In interviewing M.A. at the CCFA, Marshall occupied dual capacities; she was both a forensic interviewer collecting information for use by the police and a medical interviewer eliciting information necessary for diagnosis and treatment. We hold that statements made to interviewers at child-advocacy centers that are made for medical diagnosis and treatment are nontestimonial and are admissible without offending the Confrontation Clause. Thus, we affirm the judgment of the court of appeals to the extent that that M.A.’s statements to Marshall for the purpose of medical treatment and diagnosis were properly admitted. We further hold that statements made to interviewers at child-advocacy centers that serve primarily a forensic or investigative purpose are testimonial and are inadmissible pursuant to the Confrontation Clause. We agree with Arnold that the trial court erred in admitting the forensic statements made by M.A. to Marshall and reverse the court of appeals insofar as it held that these forensic statements were admissible. However, because the court of appeals did not consider whether the admission of M.A.’s forensic statement to Marshall was harmless ... we remand the case to the court of appeals to consider this issue.”
Justice O’Connor’s opinion was joined by Justices Evelyn Lundberg Stratton, Judith Ann Lanzinger and Robert R. Cupp. Justices Paul E. Pfeifer and Terrence O’Donnell entered separate dissenting opinions.
Justice Pfeifer noted that Marshall is not a health care professional, and wrote that while some of the information she obtained during her interview of M.A. at the CCFA may have been medically useful, it was not “necessary” to the child’s treatment because M.A. had already been examined by a doctor the night before and was about to be examined again by a nurse practitioner who was fully trained to diagnose and treat her for any injuries arising from a sexual assault. He wrote: “The circumstances of the interview indicate that its primary purpose was ‘to establish or prove past events potentially relevant to later criminal prosecution.’ Police observed the interview, which the state concedes is a customary practice. A DVD recording of the interview was preserved, a strong indication that the purpose of the interview was to obtain evidence for use by the prosecution. I am unaware of doctors videotaping patient interviews to assist them in medical treatments or of doctors allowing police officers to routinely observe them when they examine their patients. Furthermore, many of the questions asked were investigatory in nature and similar to the questions asked in a direct examination in a judicial proceeding.”
“ ... I conclude that the primary purpose of Marshall's forensic interview was to establish or prove past events potentially relevant to later criminal prosecution. I conclude, therefore, that the statements were testimonial and that their admission violates the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution. I would reverse the decision of the court of appeals.”
In his dissent, Justice O’Donnell wrote: “Today’s majority, however, charts a course different from the Confrontation Clause jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of the United States and adopts its own dual-capacity test in which the interrogation is examined on a question-by-question basis to determine whether the interviewer acted as an agent of law enforcement or as an agent of some other entity when eliciting a particular statement. Applying this test, it finds that testimonial and nontestimonial statements are interspersed throughout Marshall’s interview and that Marshall acted variously as an agent of law enforcement and as a medical examiner. This analysis is contrary to United States Supreme Court jurisprudence, which directs that we should look to the primary purpose of the interrogation, not the secondary or tertiary purpose. Here, Marshall acted as an agent of law enforcement when she interviewed M.A., as she asked questions on behalf of the police in the absence of an ongoing emergency to establish or prove past events relevant to later criminal prosecution. The interview she conducted focused solely on confirming the single instance of sexual abuse that Otto had accused Arnold of committing ... ”
“It is manifest that Marshall’s questions sought to confirm the allegations of sexual abuse and that proving these past events would be relevant at a criminal prosecution, and the totality of the circumstances indicates that the whole interview served primarily an investigative and prosecutorial purpose. ... The fact that the answers to Marshall’s questions may also be used for a nontestimonial purpose does not mean that M.A.’s statements are not testimonial or that the nontestimonial purpose takes precedence. ... In my view, the primary purpose of Marshall’s questioning was to establish what had been done to M.A. and who had done it. Accordingly, M.A.’s statements are testimonial, and their admission at trial without a prior opportunity to cross-examine M.A. violated Arnold’s right to confront the witnesses against him.”
Contacts
David L. Strait, 614.719.8872, for Michael Arnold.
Kimberly Bond, 614.462.3555, for the state and Franklin County prosecutor’s office.
Please note: Opinion summaries are prepared by the Office of Public Information for the general public and news media. Opinion summaries are not prepared for every opinion released by the Court, but only for those cases considered noteworthy or of great public interest. Opinion summaries are not to be considered as official headnotes or syllabi of Court opinions. The full text of this and other Court opinions from 1992 to the present are available online from the Reporter of Decisions. In the Full Text search box, enter the eight-digit case number at the top of this summary and click "Submit."
State v. Arnold, Slip Opinion No. 2010-Ohio-2742.
Franklin App. No. 07AP-789, 2008-Ohio-3471. Judgment of the court of appeals affirmed in part and reversed in part, and cause remanded to the court of appeals.
Lundberg Stratton, O'Connor, Lanzinger, and Cupp, JJ., concur.
Pfeifer and O'Donnell, JJ., dissent.
Brown, C.J., not participating.
Opinion: http://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/rod/docs/pdf/0/2010/2010-Ohio-2742.pdf
(June 17, 2010) In a decision announced today, the Supreme Court of Ohio held that a child’s statements made to an interviewer at a child advocacy center for purposes of medical diagnosis and treatment are non-testimonial and therefore admissible evidence at trial. The Court held further, however, that statements made to an interviewer at a child advocacy center that serve primarily a forensic or investigatory purpose are testimonial in nature and therefore are inadmissible evidence at trial.
The Court’s 4-2 majority decision, authored by Justice Maureen O’Connor, partially affirmed and partially reversed a decision of the 10th District Court of Appeals, and remanded the case to that court for additional proceedings.
In December 2005, the mother of a 4-year-old Columbus girl identified as M.A. called police to report her suspicion that the child had been sexually assaulted that evening by Michael Arnold. The child was transported to an emergency room where a rape kit examination was performed. She was then sent home overnight. The following morning M.A. was taken to the Center for Child and Family Advocacy (CCFA), a special multidisciplinary unit for victims of child and domestic abuse located at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. Kerri Marshall, a social worker employed by CCFA, conducted an in-depth interview with M.A. outside the presence of her mother during which Marshall asked a number of questions about what had taken place between the child and Arnold. The purpose of Marshall’s interview was to “gather as much information as possible,” while only subjecting the child to one interview. Thus, the interview was viewed live via closed-circuit television by several observers in another room, including a police detective and a nurse practitioner. The entire interview was also recorded on a digital video disk. Following the interview, the nurse practitioner examined M.A. The nurse practitioner testified at trial that the interview guided her examination and enabled her to determine whether to conduct a genital examination and whether to test M.A. for sexually transmitted infection. During the examination, the nurse practitioner found two abrasions on M.A.’s hymen, which she testified were “diagnostic” of sexual abuse.
Based on M.A.’s statements during the CCFA interview and other evidence, Arnold was arrested and charged with two counts of rape of a child under the age of 10. The court determined that M.A. was unavailable to testify and be cross examined in court. Over Arnold’s objections, the trial court allowed the state to show the full video of M.A.’s interview with Marshall at the CCFA to the jury. Arnold was subsequently convicted on one count of child rape and sentenced to life in prison.
Arnold appealed, arguing that by admitting M.A.’s out-of-court statements into evidence without an opportunity for cross-examination, the trial court had violated his constitutional right to confront witnesses against him. The 10th District Court of Appeals upheld Arnold’s conviction, holding that M.A.’s out-of-court statements during the CCFA interview were admissible under an exception to the hearsay rule because they were not “testimonial” statements elicited through an interrogation by a police employee or agent, but rather were statements elicited by a social worker for the purpose of determining what additional medical examination and treatment the child might require. Arnold sought Supreme Court review of the case, and the Court agreed to determine whether, in a criminal prosecution, the admission of a child’s out-of-court statements made to an interviewer employed by a child advocacy center violates the defendant’s constitutional right to confront witnesses against him.
Writing for the majority in today’s decision, Justice O’Connor reviewed recent federal and state court decisions holding that hearsay evidence (statements made by a person who is not available for questioning or cross examination at trial) that is “testimonial” in nature cannot be admitted into evidence in a criminal prosecution without violating a defendant’s rights under the Confrontation Clause. Statements are “testimonial” in nature when the questioning that elicited the proffered statements was conducted by law enforcement personnel or an agent of the police, under non-emergency circumstances, and for the primary purpose of gathering information to aid in the prosecution of a suspected crime.
She also cited this court’s decisions in State v. Stahl (2006) and State v. Muttart (2007), holding that statements made by an adult rape victim in an interview with a nurse and by a child victim of sexual abuse in an interview with a social worker prior to receiving medical care were non-testimonial in nature, and thus admissible at trial, because the primary purpose for those interviews was to diagnose and provide proper medical treatment for the victim, not to gather information for a criminal prosecution.
In applying those precedents to Arnold’s case, Justice O’Connor noted that the victim interview conducted by Marshall at CCFA served the dual purposes of eliciting information necessary for proper medical diagnosis and care of M.A., and gathering forensic information necessary to investigate and potentially prosecute suspected criminal conduct. She wrote: “Certainly, some of the statements that M.A. made to Marshall primarily served a forensic or investigative purpose. Those statements include M.A.’s assertion that Arnold shut and locked the bedroom door before raping her; her descriptions of where her mother and brother were while she was in the bedroom with Arnold, of Arnold’s boxer shorts, of him removing them, and of what Arnold’s “pee-pee” looked like; and her statement that Arnold removed her underwear. These statements likely were not necessary for medical diagnosis or treatment. Rather, they related primarily to the state’s investigation. Marshall effectively acted as an agent of the police for the purpose of obtaining these statements. ... The primary purpose of that portion of the interview was not to meet an ongoing emergency but, rather, to further the state’s forensic investigation. Thus, these statements were testimonial in nature and their admission without a prior opportunity for cross-examination is prohibited by the Confrontation Clause.”
Justice O’Connor also observed, however, that other statements by M.A. elicited during her interview with Marshall at CCFA, including those describing the sexual conduct between Arnold and M.A., provided information that was necessary to diagnose and medically treat M.A. She wrote: “In eliciting these medically necessary statements, Marshall acted as an agent of the nurse practitioner who examined M.A., not of the investigating police officers. Because Marshall did not act as an agent of the police in obtaining these statements, they are not inadmissible. ... There is no basis in the law for concluding that Marshall’s dual capacity renders statements made by M.A. for the purpose of medical diagnosis and treatment inadmissible pursuant to the Confrontation Clause. Indeed, in Davis (v. Washington, 2006), the United States Supreme Court acknowledged that the same interview or interrogation might produce both testimonial and nontestimonial statements. As the court statedin Davis, ‘This presents no great problem.’ ‘[T]rial courts will recognize the point at which, for Sixth Amendment purposes, statements in response to interrogations become testimonial. Through in limine procedure, they should redact or exclude the portions of any statement that have become testimonial, as they do, for example, with unduly prejudicial portions of otherwise admissible evidence.’”
“In interviewing M.A. at the CCFA, Marshall occupied dual capacities; she was both a forensic interviewer collecting information for use by the police and a medical interviewer eliciting information necessary for diagnosis and treatment. We hold that statements made to interviewers at child-advocacy centers that are made for medical diagnosis and treatment are nontestimonial and are admissible without offending the Confrontation Clause. Thus, we affirm the judgment of the court of appeals to the extent that that M.A.’s statements to Marshall for the purpose of medical treatment and diagnosis were properly admitted. We further hold that statements made to interviewers at child-advocacy centers that serve primarily a forensic or investigative purpose are testimonial and are inadmissible pursuant to the Confrontation Clause. We agree with Arnold that the trial court erred in admitting the forensic statements made by M.A. to Marshall and reverse the court of appeals insofar as it held that these forensic statements were admissible. However, because the court of appeals did not consider whether the admission of M.A.’s forensic statement to Marshall was harmless ... we remand the case to the court of appeals to consider this issue.”
Justice O’Connor’s opinion was joined by Justices Evelyn Lundberg Stratton, Judith Ann Lanzinger and Robert R. Cupp. Justices Paul E. Pfeifer and Terrence O’Donnell entered separate dissenting opinions.
Justice Pfeifer noted that Marshall is not a health care professional, and wrote that while some of the information she obtained during her interview of M.A. at the CCFA may have been medically useful, it was not “necessary” to the child’s treatment because M.A. had already been examined by a doctor the night before and was about to be examined again by a nurse practitioner who was fully trained to diagnose and treat her for any injuries arising from a sexual assault. He wrote: “The circumstances of the interview indicate that its primary purpose was ‘to establish or prove past events potentially relevant to later criminal prosecution.’ Police observed the interview, which the state concedes is a customary practice. A DVD recording of the interview was preserved, a strong indication that the purpose of the interview was to obtain evidence for use by the prosecution. I am unaware of doctors videotaping patient interviews to assist them in medical treatments or of doctors allowing police officers to routinely observe them when they examine their patients. Furthermore, many of the questions asked were investigatory in nature and similar to the questions asked in a direct examination in a judicial proceeding.”
“ ... I conclude that the primary purpose of Marshall's forensic interview was to establish or prove past events potentially relevant to later criminal prosecution. I conclude, therefore, that the statements were testimonial and that their admission violates the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution. I would reverse the decision of the court of appeals.”
In his dissent, Justice O’Donnell wrote: “Today’s majority, however, charts a course different from the Confrontation Clause jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of the United States and adopts its own dual-capacity test in which the interrogation is examined on a question-by-question basis to determine whether the interviewer acted as an agent of law enforcement or as an agent of some other entity when eliciting a particular statement. Applying this test, it finds that testimonial and nontestimonial statements are interspersed throughout Marshall’s interview and that Marshall acted variously as an agent of law enforcement and as a medical examiner. This analysis is contrary to United States Supreme Court jurisprudence, which directs that we should look to the primary purpose of the interrogation, not the secondary or tertiary purpose. Here, Marshall acted as an agent of law enforcement when she interviewed M.A., as she asked questions on behalf of the police in the absence of an ongoing emergency to establish or prove past events relevant to later criminal prosecution. The interview she conducted focused solely on confirming the single instance of sexual abuse that Otto had accused Arnold of committing ... ”
“It is manifest that Marshall’s questions sought to confirm the allegations of sexual abuse and that proving these past events would be relevant at a criminal prosecution, and the totality of the circumstances indicates that the whole interview served primarily an investigative and prosecutorial purpose. ... The fact that the answers to Marshall’s questions may also be used for a nontestimonial purpose does not mean that M.A.’s statements are not testimonial or that the nontestimonial purpose takes precedence. ... In my view, the primary purpose of Marshall’s questioning was to establish what had been done to M.A. and who had done it. Accordingly, M.A.’s statements are testimonial, and their admission at trial without a prior opportunity to cross-examine M.A. violated Arnold’s right to confront the witnesses against him.”
Contacts
David L. Strait, 614.719.8872, for Michael Arnold.
Kimberly Bond, 614.462.3555, for the state and Franklin County prosecutor’s office.
Please note: Opinion summaries are prepared by the Office of Public Information for the general public and news media. Opinion summaries are not prepared for every opinion released by the Court, but only for those cases considered noteworthy or of great public interest. Opinion summaries are not to be considered as official headnotes or syllabi of Court opinions. The full text of this and other Court opinions from 1992 to the present are available online from the Reporter of Decisions. In the Full Text search box, enter the eight-digit case number at the top of this summary and click "Submit."
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
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.
Please note: Opinion summaries are prepared by the Office of Public Information for the general public and news media. Opinion summaries are not prepared for every opinion released by the Court, but only for those cases considered noteworthy or of great public interest. Opinion summaries are not to be considered as official headnotes or syllabi of Court opinions. The full text of this and other Court opinions from 1992 to the present are available online from the Reporter of Decisions.
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.
Please note: Opinion summaries are prepared by the Office of Public Information for the general public and news media. Opinion summaries are not prepared for every opinion released by the Court, but only for those cases considered noteworthy or of great public interest. Opinion summaries are not to be considered as official headnotes or syllabi of Court opinions. The full text of this and other Court opinions from 1992 to the present are available online from the Reporter of Decisions.
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