SUPREME COURT REVERSES GRANT OF HABEAS CORPUS FINDING DNA EVIDENCE SUFFICIENT

The Supreme Court reaffirmed Jackson v. Virginia. In Jackson v. Virginia the Supreme Court held:

that a state prisoner is entitled to habeas corpus relief if a federal judge finds that “upon the record evidence adduced at the trial no rational trier of fact could have found proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”

This week in E. K. McDaniel v.Troy Brown the Court stated that Federal Courts can only grant a writ of habeas corpus if no rational trier of the fact could have found proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt based upon the record at trial without excluding unreliable evidence or evidence wrongly admitted.

Troy Brown was convicted of raping a nine year old girl and sentenced to life in prison. A significant portion of the evidence at trial consisted of the testimony of an expert regarding DNA samples. The expert made two major mistakes. First she committed the “prosecutor’s fallacy.” The “prosecutor’s fallacy” “is the assumption that the random match probability is the same as the probability that the defendant was not the source of the DNA sample.” This erroneously allows the prosecutor or the expert to say that the odds that another person randomly chosen has the same DNA is the same as the odds of the accused being innocent.

Troy Brown has three brother. Two of them, like Troy live near him and the victim in Nevada. The second error made by the expert was to overestimate the chances of one of his brothers having the same DNA as found in the victim. She estimated that the odds of two brothers sharing the same DNA is 1 in 6500. The actual odds of two brothers having the same DNA is 1 in 263 and the odds of two out of four brothers having the same DNA is 1 in 66.

The Supreme Court said that the habeas could only be granted based upon the testimony at trial even if the evidence was unreliable or erroneous. But in any case even if the correct evidence had been submitted a reasonable jury could have convicted Brown. There was sufficient corroborating evidence when looked at it using only the evidence most favorable to the prosecutor which is the standard in post trial appeals where a jury has convicted the defendant.

The defendant also raised a due process claim challenging the reliability of the trial DNA evidence. But since that issue was ont raised at trial or on direct appeal the Supreme Court refused to hear it.