Ohio Death Penalty Information

6th Circuit Ct of Appeals remands Anthony Apanovitch case back to district court for possible evidentiary hearing on reliability of DNA evidence, other problems

In a unanimous ruling in the ever-more-convoluted Anthony Apanovitch case, a 3-judge panel of the US 6th Circuit Ct of Appeals today remanded case proceedings back to the US District Ct for Northern Ohio for possible evidentiary hearings into, amongst other things, the reliability of DNA testing done in the case.  The court denied some of Apanovitch's Brady claims, even while acknowledging several instances of clearly improper behavior by prosecutors in withholding evidence favorable to Apanovitch, declaring that the problems did not ultimately prejudice the outcome of the case.  Court ruling is here (25-page pdf).

(Earlier coverage of concerns over reliability of DNA testing in Apanovitch case is here.)

Apanovitch attorneys seek to strike introduction of DNA test results from US 6th Circuit proceeding

Attorneys for Anthony Apanovitch filed this motion (18-page pdf: 8 pages text, 10 pages of exhibits) today in the US 6th Circuit Ct of Appeals, objecting to the introduction of results of new DNA testing into an ongoing appeal on a separate question of prosecutorial misconduct.  In addition to concerns that the DNA issue is unrelated to the purpose of the current 6th Circuit appeal, Apanovitch's attorneys also object to the introduction of the DNA test results because there has been no factual review of them, with an opportunity for the attorneys to respond (which has to be done in a lower court), and because the results could be misleading to the court - and to the public at large - without such proper review of how the evidence was obtained and handled - and tested.

Excerpt from today's court filing:

Appellee would like the public at large and this Court to believe that based on the new DNA results Apanovitch is guilty.  An equally plausible and supportable explanation is that the coroner's office did not protect against contamination.  The hair, blood and saliva samples Apanovitch voluntarily provided when he was taken into custody, see Joint Appendix at 0847-48, 0893, could have easily been contaminated and mixed with the samples taken from the victim.

Apanovitch points the Court to his 2002 Response.  In 1989, Apanovitch was told that biological evidence was "destroyed in the ordinary course of business" and was "no longer available."  Joint Appendix at 402;2002 Response at Exhibit F, unnumbered p. 10.  Mysteriously, two years later biological material re-appears and is tested without Apanovitch's knowledge.  This creates a chain of custody issue with the purported evidence...

(See earlier post here.)