Friday, August 3, 2012

Bulletin: Julio Davila: "DNA tech's questionable work delays sentencing." Spokane-Review.


STORY: "DNA tech's questionable work delays sentencing,"  by reporter Thomas Clouse, published in the Spokane-Review on August 1, 2012.

 GIST: "A Spokane County judge today postponed the sentencing of a man convicted almost exclusively on DNA evidence after defense attorneys learned that tests identifying their client as the killer had been done by a crime lab technician who later was fired. The technician’s work was so deficient that a co-worker described it as a “nightmare,” and an internal report said it could “not be trusted.”  Superior Court Judge Kathleen O’Connor stopped short of granting a new trial for Julio J. Davila, 46, who was convicted last month of second-degree murder in the 2007 killing of a Spokane adult bookstore owner. But O’Connor called for an evidentiary hearing about the DNA testing performed by Denise Olson, who was fired last year from the Washington State Patrol crime laboratory.  Defense attorney Tom Krzyminski argued that Deputy Spokane County Prosecutor Dale Nagy knew about Olson’s shoddy work and did not disclose it prior to the trial.  Co-defense attorney Kevin Griffin filed a public records request seeking information about Olson’s work history prior to Davila’s trial. But the WSP didn’t release that information until six days after a jury convicted Davila on July 13.  Olson “is a loose cannon and her work cannot be trusted,” the internal WSP report states. “The risk of a wrongful conviction or the erroneous exclusion of a guilty subject because of (her) incompetence is far too great for the agency to undertake. Attempting to work around that fact would only leave (Olson) open to harsh public and legal criticism and potential lawsuits.”
 
The entire story can be found at:

http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2012/aug/01/murderers-sentencing-postponed-based-shoddy-dna-wo/