Prosecutorial Misconduct

I should be flabberghasted, shocked, appalled, etc...  But, anymore, this kind of stuff just doesn't surprise me anymore.  And that's unfortunate:

DNA evidence has been widely embraced over the last two decades as a powerful forensic tool to prove a defendant's guilt or innocence. But in Lake County, authorities have sometimes pressed for convictions even when the DNA doesn't match a suspect.

Consider three active cases overseen by Michael Mermel, chief of the criminal division for the Lake County state's attorney's office:

When DNA evidence excluded a man convicted in the rape and battery of a 68-year-old woman, Mermel suggested the victim had consensual sex with someone else.

When DNA evidence excluded a man in the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl, Mermel and another prosecutor suggested that the girl may have been sexually active. The DNA, he said, was a "red herring."

And, just recently, when lawyers for the man charged in the killing of his 8-year-old daughter and her 9-year-old friend said in court that DNA evidence from semen excluded him as the perpetrator, the Lake prosecutor had another explanation.

Mermel said DNA may have gotten inside the 8-year-old's body as she played in the woods at what became the crime scene—a place where Mermel said some couples go to have sex. The girl was found fully clothed.

In each of the cases, all likely to go to trial in the new year, Mermel argues that other evidence, mainly confessions and witness identification, carry greater sway than the genetic material.

"It's just amazing how convincing DNA can be if it supports your case and how unconvincing it is when it doesn't support your case," said William Thompson, a lawyer and DNA expert at the University of California at Irvine.

Defending his office's approach, Mermel said Lake prosecutors believe in DNA "when it is forensically significant."

"If we thought the evidence excluded the defendant in any of these cases," he said, "we'd dismiss them."

Mermel pointed to another rape case where his office supported vacating a man's conviction after DNA excluded him as the source of semen in the victim.

But in that case the defendant had served his prison sentence and been released.

...

At a hearing six years ago in the case of Bennie Starks, who had been convicted of raping a 68-year-old woman, Mermel made an intriguing vow.

Though a semen stain on the victim's underwear contained a genetic profile different from Starks' DNA, Mermel said it was not enough to prove his innocence. What would help Starks' claim, Mermel said, was if the semen came from inside the woman's body.

"If this DNA . . . were to come from the victim herself, I would be standing over there advocating the side that the defense has in the case," Mermel said, according to a transcript.

Three years later, a vaginal swab from the rape kit on the woman was found; again, the DNA evidence did not match Starks' profile.

But Mermel still argued it failed to exonerate him in the 1986 rape case.

...

"It is such a goofy logic leap [that] because somewhere in her life she (8 year old Laura) came into contact with a sperm cell it means she was sexually assaulted," Mermel said. "To take this leap that this is the identity of the mystery killer, I don't know where everybody gets this idea."

This Prosecutor does not deserve to hold the position he is in.  It's amazing to me that he is allowed to hold a job after all this evidence has been given, and yet he continues to ignore it.

Linky