STATE V. WARE, 1999 WL 233592 (Tennessee, April 1999)
Procedural History: The defendant was convicted of felony murder and multiple counts of rape. He received concurrent 25-year sentences for each rape conviction and was sentenced to life without parole for the felony murder conviction. The defendant has appealed his convictions and sentences on several grounds, including whether the mitochondrial DNA evidence was properly admitted.
Facts: After spending the night drinking, the defendant went to the house where the victim, a four-year-old girl, was sleeping. He was a friend of the family and had stayed there on previous occasions. The victim’s mother was out and a family friend was watching the sleeping children. When the defendant arrived, he said he was going to bed. He went to bed in the room where the victim was sleeping. The room contained two twin beds and the person watching the house assumed he would pass out on the empty bed.
Approximately an hour later, the mother, having recently returned home, went to check on her daughter. The door to the bedroom had been locked from the inside and when she knocked on the door no one responded. The mother picked the lock and when she entered the room, she noticed that both beds were empty and her daughter’s clothes were crumpled up in the comforter. The mother then opened the door to a laundry room connected to the back of the bedroom and discovered the naked bodies of the defendant and her daughter lying on the floor. Looking blue and feeling cold, the daughter was rushed to the hospital where attempts to resuscitate her failed. The emergency room doctor testified that both the victim’s vagina and rectum were torn.
The medical examiner determined the cause of death to be mechanical asphyxia. During his examination, the doctor found a hair stuck to the victim’s lip, one touching the mucosa of her rectum and a third hair in the victim’s pharynx. The police recovered additional hairs off the victim’s bed. A special agent with the FBI’s Hair and Fibers Unit testified regarding the testing he performed on the hairs found at the crime scene and on the victim’s body. He concluded that the hairs from the bed and the hair in the victim’s pharynx were consistent with having originated from the defendant. He pointed out, however, that hair comparison is not a means of making a positive identification and as such, he could not conclusively say if the hairs belonged to the defendant.
Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) testing was performed by the FBI on the hairs recovered from the victim’s throat and from a hair on the bed sheet. The DNA sequence obtained was compared with that of the defendant’s saliva. The three samples shared a common sequence and none of the sample matched the sample taken from the victim. The FBI expert conducting the mtDNA testing explained that the hairs in question were consistent with having originated from the defendant, but that he could not assign a frequency rate to the results because the database for mtDNA population statistical analysis was not large enough to assign a frequency. He did mention that the sequence had never been observed in the FBI database of 742 individuals.
The defendant offered the testimony of a geneticist who testified that mtDNA typing was not scientifically reliable and that it had not yet been subjected to proper peer review or publication. (No admissibility hearing was conducted before the trial.)
Issue: Is mitochondrial DNA testing evidence sufficiently reliable to be deemed trustworthy and thus admissible?
Holding: Yes. Mitochondrial DNA testing is sufficiently reliable so as to be trustworthy and admissible.
Reasoning: In Tennessee, the Tennessee Rules of Evidence have replaced Frye in governing the admissibility of expert testimony on DNA analysis. In interpreting the applicable rules, the Tennessee Supreme Court has developed a two-step approach for trial courts to follow. The trial court must first determine if the evidence will substantially assist the trier of fact to determine a fact in issue. The trial court must then determine if the facts underlying the evidence are trustworthy. There is no requirement in the rules that the evidence be generally accepted.
While this court indicated that it was somewhat questionable as to whether the mtDNA testimony was such that it would substantially assist the jury, the court nevertheless concluded that the trial judge did not abuse his discretion in admitting the results. There was sufficient evidence in the testimony of the State’s expert regarding the validity of mtDNA analysis for the courts to find it valid and trustworthy.
Even if the evidence had been improperly admitted, the court determined that this would have been a harmless error because absent a frequency rate, the testimony did not provide a strong basis for a lay person to reach a scientific conclusion.
Disposition: The judgment of the trial court was affirmed.
