Court Opinion

ID: 9751798
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 17:05:30.610595+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:59.574509
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
HARRELL, J.,
in which BELL, C.J. and ELDRIDGE, J., join.
I respectfully dissent in this fact-bound case. The trial judge’s dismissal of the indictment was legally correct, in my view. Contrary to the conclusions offered in the Majority’s analysis, the record does not reflect that the delays occasioned by the DNA testing process and transmittal of the results and *233related documentation to the defense was due, as the Majority hints, to the inherent complexities of DNA testing (Maj. op. at at 226). Also, the Majority is mistaken in its claim that the record is devoid of evidence that the State was other than diligent (Id.). Rather, the delay of concededly constitutional dimension in this case was caused by what may be described as avoidable benign neglect and institutional snafus on the part of the State and its units.1
The victim was discovered by law enforcement authorities on 24 February 1998. The State, therefore, had early access to samples of the victim’s blood and the jeans he was wearing when discovered, from which jeans a bloodstain on a pocket was discovered much later that became a critical focus of the DNA analysis. Unfortunately, and for reasons that go unexplained on this record, the pocket bloodstain evidence went undiscovered by the authorities until sometime in late April-early May 1999.2 The authorities had obtained a blood sample from Petitioner in May or June 1998; however, Petitioner was not arrested until 26 February 1999, over a year after the victim’s body was discovered, and was not indicted until 31 March 1999.
The record is obscure as to when the samples were forwarded, and to which laboratory initially, for DNA testing. The State’s written trial postponement request, filed on 2 July 1999, stated as grounds for a postponement, inter alia, “scientific evidence (D.N.A. testing results) not back from F.B.I. *234Crime Lab....” At the 14 July 1999 hearing on this postponement request, the prosecutor represented to the court that he was informed by a person from the Maryland State Police’s Crime Laboratory on 30 June 1999 “that the sample had to be sent on to the FBI crime lab for more detailed analysis and would not be ready for trial on” 19 July 1999.3 He explained further that the State Police had “just recently” received the jeans pocket bloodstain and, “they were having a hard time pulling off and matching on the preliminary type testing they do, so it had to be sent to the FBI crime lab.” Finally, the prosecutor maintained that the State Police crime laboratory was not able to perform the “level of analysis” required.
The record, however, does not- reveal that any of the samples ever were sent to the FBI for testing. Rather, it appears that the Maryland State Police crime lab performed both of the DNA tests in this case. In a letter, dated 30 July 1999,4 from the prosecutor to Petitioner’s attorney transmitting the Maryland State Police Crime Laboratory Division’s lab report 5 results of a Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test on the samples, the State notes that it was still awaiting results of testing from the Trace Unit of that division. A second round of DNA test results, also apparently from tests conducted by the State Police crime lab, was relayed to Petitioner’s counsel by the prosecutor in a letter dated 8 October 1999. This second State Police crime lab report, dated 27 August 1999, contained results apparently obtained via the Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (RFLP) process,6 although *235that process was not mentioned as such in the report. Thus, it appears prima facie that the State Police crime lab indeed was capable of performing the more sophisticated RFLP test, the suggestions to the contrary in the State’s initial postponement justification notwithstanding. We also are left to wonder on this record what role, if any, the FBI crime lab may have played in the matter, other than the mere invocation of its name to interject some verisimilitude into the State’s justification for the initial postponement.
Petitioner, on 23 August 1999 at the latest, asked for the testing notes from the State Police crime lab regarding any DNA testing. The prosecutor supplied the chemist’s notes from the PCR testing, but, at a 20 December 1999 court hearing, claimed that crime lab personnel advised him that no notes were taken relative to the RFLP test. Petitioner’s counsel registered surprise that no notes existed for the more sophisticated RFLP test in light of the facts that notes were made on the less sophisticated PCR test and the results of the RFLP test depicted as “uninterpretable” 3 of the 6 genetic markers obtained from the DNA profile of the jeans pocket bloodstain when compared to Petitioner’s DNA profile from his blood sample.
Two days after the 20 December 1999 hearing, the prosecutor forwarded to Petitioner’s counsel copies of the chemist’s notes from the second DNA test that was the subject of the 27 August 1999 report. As the prosecutor explained to the court at a 6 January 2000 hearing on Petitioner’s Motion To Suppress the DNA evidence, the confusion over whether notes existed for the presumed RFLP test was occasioned by: (1) different chemists conducting the PCR and RFLP tests; (2) both chemists leaving State employment in September 1999; (3) the next assigned contact person at the State Police crime lab responsible for the case could not find the notes from the second test (which were in a file at the lab); and, (4) it took the involvement of the lab supervisor and others to search and locate the notes. Essentially, the prosecutor chalked-up the delay to unintentional internal confusion at the crime lab caused by imprecision in the transfer of responsibilities.
*236The upshot of this was another postponement on 6 January 2000 of the 13 January 2000 trial date. Although the court denied Petitioner’s suppression motion as to the DNA evidence, it later granted his motion to dismiss for want of a speedy trial, concluding that “the State has offered no explanation as to why ... the DNA test results and reports were not completely available until December 23rd of 1999. Th[at] unavailability of this material resulted in failures of discovery is the bottomline reason for the ultimate delay in this case. In the final analysis, the State is responsible for each and every postponement of this case.”
This is what the record of this case reveals. As is patently clear, the delays attributable to the obtention of samples and DNA testing were laid at the feet of the State. The delays were not occasioned by the complexity of testing. Therefore, it is of concern to me that the Majority, in its analysis of the Barker v. Wingo considerations, glosses over and misstates what the record shows and, instead, leads the analysis down a theoretical primrose path that bears no relevance to the facts and permissible inferences present in this case. In its examination of the Barker “reasons for delay” factor, the Majority reasons that “DNA evidence is highly technical, often requiring courts to allow more time for completion of the tests and review, by both parties of the results.” (Maj. op. at 226). It then acknowledges, however, the “State [has] a duty to coordinate the various criminal divisions, including those responsible for laboratory analysis, necessary to bring a defendant to trial. This duty includes, of course, ensuring that critical discovery materials, such as DNA evidence, are properly monitored and accounted for, and not simply collecting dust in State or federal crime labs. In regard to the State’s initial request for postponement, we find no evidence that the State failed to act in a diligent manner and therefore, we conclude that these grounds for the postponement were both neutral and justified.” (Id.).
Except for its inability to find “evidence” in the record “that the State failed to act in a diligent manner”7 and its erroneous *237conclusion that the “grounds for the [initial] postponement were both neutral and justified,” I accept the Majority’s generalizations about societal expectations and the scientific complexities of DNA testing. Where I part company, however, is that this record reveals no evidence that the State acted diligently, but rather much evidence and inferences tó the contrary. It is this state of the evidence, which was before the trial court, that leads me to conclude the trial judge was correct.

. In Doggett v. United States, 505 U.S. 647, 112 S.Ct. 2686, 120 L.Ed.2d 520 (1992), the Supreme Court said:
Between diligent prosecution and bad-faith delay, official negligence in bringing an accused to 1rial occupies the middle ground. While not compelling relief in every case where bad-faith delay would make relief virtually automatic, neither is negligence automatically tolerable simply because the accused cannot demonstrate exactly how it prejudiced him.
505 U.S. at 656-57, 112 S.Ct. at 2693, 120 L.Ed.2d at 531.

. The prosecutor explained to the court at a 14 July 1999 hearing on the State’s initial postponement request that the bloodstain on the pocket was discovered while "going through the evidence for a closer look.”

. The prosecutor who argued the postponement request also mentioned he had only been "recently ... assigned to the matter/' taking over for an earlier assigned prosecutor.

. A copy of the letter was filed with the court on 2 August 1999.

. The report is dated 7 July 1999, but does not contain any clear indication when and from whom the samples were received initially, whether the samples had been routed initially to the FBI, or when the test was conducted. It could be inferred from the file number (# F98-130), however, that a file on the matter was opened in 1998.

. See Williams v. State, 342 Md. 724, 744-45 n. 6, 679 A.2d 1106, 1117 n. 6 (1996), for a technical explanation of the PCR and RFLP testing processes.

. The Majority, later in its analysis of the reasons for delay, chastises the State for its "failure to comply with discovery guidelines for DNA *237evidence,” but only with regard to locating and delivering to Petitioner the chemist's notes from the second round of DNA tests (Maj. op. at at 227 -28). Just as briefly, however, the Majority excuses the gravamen of its ''admonition” because, in its view, "the delays in petitioner’s case, as a whole, stem largely from neutral reasons.” (Id. at 228). Fundamentally, it is that last generalization with which the trial judge and I disagree.