Opinion ID: 1058303
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: lost evidence and sufficiency of the evidence

Text: Among the items of physical evidence that the medical examiner preserved during her examination of Raver's body were two hairs obtained from combings of Raver's pubic area. These two hairs were examined shortly after their discovery and were determined to be foreign to Raver. No further examination was conducted because there was no suspect's hair to which a comparison could be made. When Prieto was developed as a suspect almost 17 years later, the hairs were missing. When Dr. Field, the medical examiner, performed her physical examination of Raver's body and recovered evidence swabs from inside Raver's vagina, she also took pubic combings from Raver to remove any foreign hair that may be present. According to Dr. Field, in a possible victim of a sexual assault, pubic combings are conducted to remove any foreign hair that might be present for comparison with a suspected assailant's hair. In December 1988, within a week after Raver's body was discovered, Myron T. Scholberg, a forensic scientist for the Commonwealth of Virginia and a hair, fiber, and fabric expert, prepared a certificate of analysis concerning the results of hair examinations he conducted of Raver and Fulton. The Fairfax County police provided Scholberg with Raver's pubic hair combings, her known head hairs and pubic hairs, and a hair that was removed from a vaginal swab. Scholberg also received Fulton's head hairs and pubic hairs. At the time of Scholberg's examination, there was no suspect, so he had nothing with which to compare the samples. Scholberg was asked to determine if there were any hairs foreign to Raver in her pubic hair combings. According to Scholberg, at that time, DNA testing was not used by the laboratory. Scholberg determined that Raver's known hairs were Caucasian, and observed two hairs of Negroid origin in her pubic hair combings, which could not have originated from Raver. One of the Negroid hairs was a head hair and the other was a head hair fragment. Scholberg testified that the head hair fragment was too small and did not contain enough of the hair or its characteristics to compare with a known sample. According to Scholberg, the head hair was a full-length hair with a root and was suitable for comparison purposes. However, Scholberg determined that this full-length hair was not forcibly removed, and therefore did not have a piece of tissue on the end of the root that could later be used for DNA analysis. Scholberg testified that he could not exclude the possibility that the hairs he examined were Hispanic in origin. Scholberg's notes do not indicate he examined the hair on the vaginal swab. He was asked to report any foreign hairs, and he did not report that the hair on the vaginal swab was foreign to Raver. Scholberg also prepared a second report which indicated examinations [were] being held in abeyance pending possible additional known hairs from a suspect. In January 1989, when Scholberg was finished with his analysis of the hairs, Fairfax County Police Officer James F. Mowatt collected the recovered hairs in a sealed condition from the laboratory and took them to the police property room. On September 21, 2005, almost 17 years after the murders, Fairfax County homicide detective Robert J. Murphy went to the police property room and retrieved a brown opaque envelope, which was the original container believed to contain the hair from Raver's pubic combings. He transported it to the laboratory and submitted it to Carol Palmer, the forensic scientist who was going to look at the hair and determine whether it would be suitable for DNA testing. Two days later, Palmer called Detective Murphy and told him that the envelope was empty. That same day, Detective Murphy went first to the laboratory and then to the police property room where he searched for the missing hair evidence, but could not find it. He located the envelope designated to contain the hair from the vaginal swab and transported it to the laboratory, but later learned the vaginal swab hair was missing as well. Detective Murphy, along with another detective and property officers, searched the entire property room on four separate occasions. They looked at every single item of evidence in the case. At Detective Murphy's direction, the laboratory personnel searched the entire laboratory, including lockers and old property files. Despite the intensive search, the missing evidence was never located. After Prieto became a suspect in the murders, a sample of his head hair was obtained for examination. Charles Linch, a hair examiner for the Commonwealth of Virginia, examined the sample of Prieto's head hair for purposes of classifying the hairs' race characteristics. Linch concluded that Prieto's head hairs were mixed, with Mongoloid and Caucasian characteristics. When Linch was asked if in his practice he would make an opinion based on one hair and a fragment of another, Linch said he would issue a report saying it was characteristically this or characteristically that. He continued, [i]f I say characteristically Negroid, that wouldn't mean it had to come from a black person. But it had Negroid characteristics, predominant Negroid characteristics. We all have mixtures in our head hair. According to Linch, [n]one of [the hairs] had characteristically Negroid pigmentation.... [I]f these hairs were found individually [and I had] just a piece of one of the heavy pigmented ones, I might could [sic] make the error and call it a Negroid hair. Linch's report concluded that [t]he head hairs exhibited are characteristically Mongoloid and characteristically mixed Mongoloid[/]Caucasian, racial characteristics. Linch also testified about the transient nature of hair, which can be transferred from person to person. Linch testified that when an expert finds another person's hair on a victim, there is no way the expert can determine how it got there unless the expert saw it either fall or be transferred. Prieto filed a motion to bar capital punishment due to the loss of the hair evidence and the impact he maintains its unavailability had on the triggerman theory. The circuit court denied Prieto's motion to bar the death penalty based on the loss of evidence by the Commonwealth. The circuit court noted that [n]o one is suggesting [the loss of the evidence] was done for bad purposes. Furthermore, the circuit court stated: In this case, there is zero evidence at all; zero. Not a a scintilla of evidence that this evidence was lost for any bad faith purpose, maliciously, or intentionally. In fact, the government literally turned the property room upside down looking for this evidence. The circuit court continued: So, I don't see any evidence that it was done intentionally, and absent evidence that it was done intentionally, or in bad faith, or maliciously ... I cannot understand why the defense would be entitled to an adverse inference, because there is no reason at all for me to believe that there is anything about the fact that this evidence is missing that would warrant an adverse inference. On appeal, Prieto assigns error to four determinations by the circuit court relating to the lost hair evidence and the sufficiency of the evidence to convict Prieto as an immediate perpetrator or triggerman, which is required for Prieto's conviction as a principal in the first degree, making him eligible for the death penalty. Code § 18.2-18. Prieto argues that the circuit court erred in (1) failing to strike the death penalty at the close of the Commonwealth's case-in-chief because the Commonwealth failed to prove Prieto was the triggerman; (2) denying his motion to bar the death penalty because the Commonwealth lost evidence crucial to his defense; (3) not dismissing the charges against him because the Commonwealth lost the foreign hairs from Raver's pubic combings, which he contends were exculpatory evidence; and (4) failing to instruct the jury regarding an adverse inference to be drawn against the Commonwealth due to its loss of the evidence. Prieto also argues that the Commonwealth violated his due process rights by losing exculpatory evidence, and that he was not required to show bad faith to establish a due process violation. Prieto maintains that there are two categories of evidence which, if lost, can serve as the basis for a due process violation: (1) material exculpatory evidence, and (2) potentially useful evidence. Prieto asserts that while the loss of evidence that is merely potentially useful requires a showing of bad faith to establish a constitutional violation, the loss of apparently exculpatory evidence violates due process, even in the absence of bad faith. According to Prieto, the lost hairs were apparently exculpatory. Prieto contends that either through a comparison between his own hair and the lost hairs or through DNA samples derived from the full-length hair, he could have shown that the hairs were not his and that another perpetrator was involved. Prieto argues that the existence of another perpetrator would have rendered the evidence presented insufficient to establish him as the immediate perpetrator and thus he would not have been subject to the death penalty. Prieto asserts that the circuit court erred by not, at a minimum, giving an adverse inference instruction to the jury. The Commonwealth contends the circuit court did not err in denying Prieto's motions for relief concerning the loss of evidence. The Commonwealth argues that because the lost hairs were only potentially useful evidence, Prieto must show bad faith to constitute a denial of due process of law. According to the Commonwealth, Prieto did not dispute the circuit court's finding that there was no bad faith on the part of the investigators or prosecutors involved in the loss of only potentially exculpatory evidence. The Commonwealth originally sought to have the hair examined because the hair was potentially inculpatory, and argues that Prieto was not prejudiced by the loss of the hair. According to the Commonwealth, because the hair was missing and there was evidence that the hair contained Negroid characteristics, Prieto had the opportunity to argue to the jury that the hair established the existence of another perpetrator.
The Commonwealth does not have an absolute duty to retain and preserve all material that might be of conceivable evidentiary significance in a particular proceeding. Arizona v. Youngblood, 488 U.S. 51, 58, 109 S.Ct. 333, 102 L.Ed.2d 281 (1988). Evidence obtained by the police prior to the identification of a suspect under some circumstances may be inculpatory or exculpatory, and whether it is exculpatory cannot be determined until a comparison can be made with an identified suspect. Such evidence is potentially exculpatory, and not apparently exculpatory. If the potentially exculpatory evidence is lost prior to the determination of a suspect, unless there is bad faith on the part of the Commonwealth, there is no due process violation. [U]nless a criminal defendant can show bad faith on the part of the police, failure to preserve potentially useful evidence does not constitute a denial of due process of law. Id. A defendant is not entitled to an adverse inference instruction due to the loss of evidence that only potentially has exculpatory value, when the loss is without fault by the Commonwealth. The circuit court explicitly stated that the missing evidence was as likely to hurt Prieto as help him. Because the evidence was only potentially exculpatory, Prieto was required to show bad faith in order to successfully lodge a due process violation claim. The circuit court found that the evidence was not lost as a result of bad faith by the Commonwealth, and Prieto does not dispute that finding. The circuit court's findings are supported by the evidence, which renders the exculpatory value of the lost hair inconclusive. Scholberg classified Prieto's hair as Mongoloid/Caucasian, but testified that he could not exclude the possibility that the lost hairs were Hispanic in origin. Linch, whose analysis took place after the hairs were lost, also characterized Prieto's hair as mixed Mongoloid and Caucasian. However, Linch testified that if Prieto's individual hairs or only a piece of a heavily pigmented hair was found, Linch might mistakenly call it a Negroid hair. It is unclear from the record whether DNA analysis could have been performed on the hairs if they had not been lost. Additional support for the circuit court's finding that the lost hairs from Raver's pubic combings were only potentially exculpatory comes from the fact that the record does not reflect the whereabouts of the hairs from the years 1989 to 2005. Since the hairs were last observed in 1989 when Scholberg examined them prior to the evidence envelope being sealed, and they were not present in 2005 when the evidence envelope was next unsealed, the reasonable inference to be drawn is that the hairs were lost at some time prior to 2005 when Prieto's DNA sample was taken for comparison purposes. The hairs could not have apparent exculpatory value when there was no suspect with whom a comparison could be made. In fact, the Commonwealth believed there was inculpatory value to these hairs, which was why DNA analysis was attempted. Prieto himself referred to the missing evidence as potentially exculpatory in his motion to bar the death penalty, though he now argues on appeal that the lost hairs had apparent exculpatory value. We have previously addressed the issue of the loss of potentially useful evidence. We held in Lovitt v. Warden, Sussex I State Prison, 266 Va. 216, 241, 585 S.E.2d 801, 815 (2003), cert. denied, 541 U.S. 1006, 124 S.Ct. 2018, 158 L.Ed.2d 523 (2004) (internal citations omitted), that under the Youngblood standard, a state's failure to preserve potentially useful evidence does not constitute a denial of due process unless a defendant can show bad faith on the part of the state. The presence or absence of bad faith by the state depends on whether agents of the state had knowledge of the exculpatory value of the evidence when it was lost or destroyed. Thus, the possibility that evidence could have exculpated a defendant depending on future testing results is not enough to satisfy the constitutional standard of materiality. It is undisputed that there was no bad faith on the part of the Commonwealth. Defense counsel again conceded the lack of bad faith at oral argument on appeal. Therefore, since the lost hairs were only potentially useful evidence and the Commonwealth did not act in bad faith, the loss of the evidence does not constitute a due process violation that would require a reversal of Prieto's convictions. We hold that the circuit court properly denied Prieto's motion to bar the death penalty and correctly refused to dismiss the charges against Prieto due to the loss of the hairs.
On appeal, Prieto argues that the evidence of foreign hairs supports his argument that there must have been another perpetrator present at the scene; and that although the evidence supports Prieto's conviction for rape, the existence of a second perpetrator precludes a determination that Prieto was the immediate perpetrator of the murders. The Commonwealth argues that there is only evidence of one person at the scene committing the rape and the murders; and, therefore, because the DNA evidence implicates Prieto in the rape, the evidence is sufficient to support his conviction as the immediate perpetrator of the murders. Prieto relies upon our decisions in Rogers v. Commonwealth, 242 Va. 307, 410 S.E.2d 621 (1991), and Cheng, to argue that there was insufficient evidence to establish him as the immediate perpetrator of the murders. In Rogers, the defendant admitted to the rape and robbery of the victim, but repeatedly denied knowing who stabbed her. Id. at 315, 410 S.E.2d at 626. The defendant stated in a police interview that Troy Malcolm told the defendant that he had stabbed the victim, and stated that he saw blood on Malcolm's jacket. Id. at 314, 410 S.E.2d at 625. Malcolm admitted to being present in the victim's home, where the crimes were committed. Id. at 316, 410 S.E.2d at 626. The defendant stated that he remained in the victim's home after Malcolm ran out the back door, and was confronted by two witnesses when he later exited the house. Id. We determined that the Commonwealth tacitly conced[ed] that at least one other person was present at some point during this criminal enterprise, and held, therefore, that the evidence was insufficient to exclude Malcolm as a perpetrator. Id. at 318-19, 410 S.E.2d at 628. We reversed the defendant's capital murder conviction. Id. at 320, 410 S.E.2d at 629. In Cheng, there were three known participants in the abduction, robbery, and murder of the victim. 240 Va. at 43, 393 S.E.2d at 608. The defendant and two co-conspirators were together during the two days prior to when the victim's body was discovered. Id. at 30-31, 393 S.E.2d at 601. The defendant told the co-conspirators that he was going to rob a restaurant and they went to a restaurant co-owned by the victim. Id. The next day, the defendant told the co-conspirators to bring the shotgun and the jeep, and they stopped at the house of one of the co-conspirators and retrieved the shotgun and the defendant's jeep. Id. at 31, 393 S.E.2d at 601. The following morning, the victim's body was found with four gunshot wounds. Id. at 31-32, 393 S.E.2d at 602. The defendant in Cheng told a police officer that he didn't do it. Id. at 33, 393 S.E.2d at 603. The police officer testified that the defendant later told him that a man had put a contract on him and they had to get rid of him, but that the defendant did not state directly that he was involved in the crimes. Id. at 43, 393 S.E.2d at 608. We held that the evidence, at most, created a strong suspicion that the defendant was the triggerman, and was therefore insufficient to support his conviction of capital murder. Id. We have previously addressed the standard of review for a challenge, on appeal, of the sufficiency of the evidence supporting a jury verdict. We have held in many cases that, upon appellate review, the evidence and all reasonable inferences flowing therefrom must be viewed in the light most favorable to the prevailing party in the trial court. The judgment of the trial court is presumed to be correct and will be reversed only upon a showing that it is plainly wrong or without evidence to support it. The issue upon appellate review is whether, after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. Maxwell v. Commonwealth, 275 Va. 437, 442, 657 S.E.2d 499, 502 (2008) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). Unlike in Rogers and Cheng, in this case there was no conclusive evidence of the presence of another perpetrator. Rogers and Cheng are inapplicable due to the overwhelming evidence that Prieto was the sole perpetrator of the murders. The field where Raver and Fulton's bodies were discovered in December 1988 was located at the 1800 block of Hunter Mill Road, which lies just south of the Dulles Toll Road in Fairfax County. Prieto was familiar with the area as prior to the time of the murders, he worked with a crew cutting grass and driving trucks along the Dulles Toll Road, near where the bodies were found. When the police thoroughly searched the scene of the murders, there was no evidence discovered, other than potentially the lost hair evidence, that pointed to the existence of a second suspect. Raver and Fulton were each killed by a single gunshot wound. The bullets recovered from their bodies were fired from the same weapon. The weapon was determined to be a revolver. Prieto owned a revolver around the time of the murders. There was no evidence of a second weapon involved in the murders or present at the scene of the murders. The Commonwealth's theory of the murders was that Raver and Fulton were abducted and taken to the scene of the murders in Raver's car. When Raver and Fulton drove in her car to Washington, D.C. the last night they were seen alive, the backseat of the car contained a large box filled with miscellaneous items. There was only enough space for one additional person to sit in the backseat of the car. It was fewer than 36 hours after Raver and Fulton were last seen alive when the car was observed in New York City. Circumstantial evidence from the scene included Raver's body being found a short distance from where all her clothes except her bra, sweater, coat, and socks were located. The evidence of scraping on her body and the presence of Prieto's semen in her vagina support the conclusion that she was raped at the scene by Prieto, and there was no evidence of any other person's participation in the assault, rape, or murders. The potentially exculpatory foreign hairs did not lessen the impact of the other evidence the jury heard at trial. The presence of the hairs could have been the result of transference. Evidence was presented by the Commonwealth that because of the transient nature of hair, there were, prior to the transfer, potential sources of the hair other than another perpetrator. The lost hairs could have been transferred as a result of Raver's use of a common washer and dryer in her apartment building or from her use of the toilet at the Washington, D.C. restaurant the last evening she was seen alive, or from Prieto or possibly even Fulton, as a carrier of the hairs and not the source. The fact that Raver was wearing new underpants on the night of the murders does not negate the possibility of such transference. From the standpoint of a forensic analysis, the hairs' significance in terms of exculpatory value was inconclusive at best, possibly even having the potential to inculpate Prieto if it was determined the lost hairs matched his known head hairs. When viewed together, the evidence presented at trial, including the substantial circumstantial evidence, was sufficient to support Prieto's death sentence as an immediate perpetrator or principal in the first degree in the two capital murder convictions. Circumstantial evidence is not viewed in isolation. `While no single piece of evidence may be sufficient, the combined force of many concurrent and related circumstances, each insufficient in itself, may lead a reasonable mind irresistibly to a conclusion.' Commonwealth v. Hudson, 265 Va. 505, 514, 578 S.E.2d 781, 786 (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting Derr v. Commonwealth, 242 Va. 413, 425, 410 S.E.2d 662, 669 (1991)), cert. denied, 540 U.S. 972, 124 S.Ct. 444, 157 L.Ed.2d 322 (2003). Based upon the overwhelming evidence that Prieto raped Raver at the time she was murdered and the circumstantial evidence that there was only one perpetrator involved in the murders, the evidence is sufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Prieto was the immediate perpetrator of the murders of Raver and Fulton. We hold that the circuit court correctly denied Prieto's motions to strike based on his argument that the evidence was insufficient to prove he was the immediate perpetrator and that he committed the crimes for which he was convicted.