Opinion ID: 1210687
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Refusal to Allow Testing of the Newly Chosen Sample for the Presence of Blood

Text: Dr. Maddox and Mr. Sims' designee, Mr. Myers (the district court erroneously referred to him as Dr. Myers), chose an area of the t-shirt between stains labeled 6J and 6K as a replacement for Area 6G. In their view, this area was likely to contain Cooper's blood. They therefore took their sample from this area. They then divided the sample into three pieces. They sent one of the pieces to the state-designated lab, sent one to Cooper's designated lab, and retained the third piece at Dr. Maddox's lab. However, no one tested the new sample (or any part of it) to determine if any of the three pieces actually contained blood. Cooper objected to the failure to test the newly chosen sample for blood. He specifically requested that it be tested to determine if it contained blood. The district court denied the request on the ground that Cooper had not previously requested testing of the sample for the presence of blood. See 4/22/05 RT 10-11, 57-58, 171-72; see also Dist. Ct., 510 F.3d at 935 n. 16. The district court's refusal to test the newly chosen sample for the presence of blood was wrong on two counts. First, the district court was wrong procedurally. It was unfair to fault Cooper for not having previously requested testing of the sample for blood. Up until September 13, Cooper reasonably assumed that the sample to be chosen for testing would come from the stain in Area 6G, which everyone believed contained Cooper's blood. It was therefore unnecessary to request testing of a sample from Area 6G for the presence of blood. Such testing only became necessary when a new sample was chosen. After Area 6G was deemed unsuitable, even the State told the district court that additional testing of the new subject sample would be required to determine whether Cooper's blood is actually present in the stain. ER 4194. Cooper had no reason specifically to request this additional testing after the State said that it was required. Second, and more important, the district court was wrong substantively. Because of the failure to test the new sample for the presence of blood, it was possible that, as intended by the protocol, all of the pieces of the new sample sent for EDTA testing had Cooper's blood. But it was also possible that one or more of the pieces had none of his blood. This second possibility was greatly enhanced for the new sample, as compared to the old one from Area 6G. The new sample was adjacent to Area 6G, and therefore Dr. Maddox and Mr. Myers assumed that it contained Cooper's blood. But it was unclear how far into the new sample Cooper's blood extended (if indeed his blood extended into the new sample at all). Further, the new sample was both larger and more irregularly shaped than the old sample, making it even more likely that any blood on the sample was not evenly distributed throughout the entire sample. As I discuss below, these characteristics of the new sample may well account for the radical difference obtained by the two labs in testing their pieces of the sample. The State-designated lab found an extremely high level of EDTA in its piece. The Cooper-designated lab found an elevated but lower level of EDTA in its piece. This disparity could well have happened because the state-designated lab tested a piece that contained Cooper's blood, and the Cooper-designated lab tested a piece that did not contain his blood, or contained considerably less of it. If the district court had permitted testing of the new sample for blood  and, specifically, Cooper's blood  we would know the answer.