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Using DNA Fingerprints as Evidence Touches Off Debate

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

After two other potential defendants pleaded guilty when they learned that DNA evidence might be used against them, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office targeted accused rapist Henry Wilds to become the first person prosecuted in the county using the controversial “genetic fingerprinting” technique.

Closing arguments are scheduled today before Van Nuys Superior Court Judge James M. Coleman on whether DNA evidence can be used against Wilds. Coleman’s decision will conclude a pretrial hearing that has continued sporadically since June, during which a battery of defense and prosecution witnesses have been flown in to testify.

Prosecutors decided on Wilds--charged with two counts of rape, two counts of robbery, five counts of forcible oral copulation and one count of burglary--after a year of searching for the perfect case, said Dino Fulgoni, who until a month ago was head of the district attorney’s special crimes section.

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Two major points were considered, Fulgoni said, in selecting the Wilds case as the guinea pig for the new technique: DNA evidence solidly links the defendant to his alleged crimes, and the prosecution’s case is strong enough for a conviction even without the genetic fingerprinting.

“In this particular case, there’s plenty of other evidence” to assure a conviction, said Fulgoni, who spent a year and a half searching for a case he believed capable of standing the test of appeals all the way to the state Supreme Court.

In addition to the genetic evidence against Wilds, he has been identified by one woman and had a knife and mask in his possession similar to those described by the rape victims, said Fulgoni, now a Superior Court judge.

Wilds’ court-appointed attorney, Ralph J. Novotney Jr., has challenged the use of the DNA evidence, contending that it is not accepted by the scientific community. Under California law, a new technique must be proved reliable and generally accepted by the scientific community before it can be used in court.

Wilds is accused of assaulting and robbing a 30-year-old woman Dec. 26, 1986, in the underground garage of her security apartment building, and a nearly identical attack on a 27-year-old woman Feb. 22, 1987.

He was arrested by Los Angeles police in April, 1987, after a 28-year-old North Hollywood woman said a man on a bicycle had followed her into the underground parking lot of her apartment building. Instead of getting out of her car, the woman drove out of the garage and flagged down police, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Lisa Kahn, who is prosecuting Wilds.

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If convicted of all the counts, Wilds could be sentenced to up to 53 years in prison.

Wilds at first served as his own attorney, then hired and fired an attorney before Novotney took the case. Prosecutors used the delays to have DNA tests performed.

Over defense objections, they got a court order and took samples of Wilds’ blood, which were analyzed for DNA and compared to sperm found in the two victims.

“Essentially, we burst open the cell until we get to the nucleus of the cell and get the DNA out of the chromosomes,” Kahn said, explaining laboratory analysis in a DNA case. “Then we take the DNA from the sperm found in the two victims and compare it to the DNA we find in Wilds’ blood.”

Maryland-based Sylmar Diagnostics, which performed the test, said the DNA in Wilds’ blood matched the DNA in the vaginal specimens of the two victims, Fulgoni said.

Prosecution experts testified that there is an infinitesimal chance that the sperm samples came from someone other than Wilds.

Developed four years ago in Great Britain, DNA analysis is allowed in more than 20 states and could someday become as important a forensic technique as fingerprinting, Fulgoni said.

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DNA, short for deoxyribonucleic acid, is found in all human cells, including those that make up blood, hair, skin and semen. Scientists say the genetic makeup of tissue can be translated into intricate DNA patterns that resemble supermarket bar codes.

Current research indicates that--discounting identical twins--the chances of two people having identical DNA structure are more than a billion to one, Kahn said. The population of the planet is estimated at 5 billion, she added.

“It’s a valuable new technique for law enforcement and the criminal justice system,” Kahn said. “Not only will this give prosecutors evidence of guilt, but it also has the power to exonerate people.”

However, critics of the process compare it to lie-detector tests and voice-analysis machines, which once were hailed as striking breakthroughs and later shown to have flaws that made them inadmissible in many courts.

In September, a 35-year-old Ventura woman became the first person in California to be convicted with genetic evidence, after prosecutors used the DNA patterns in 15 strands of hair as evidence that she fatally stabbed a 63-year-old man during an attempted robbery at a Ventura hamburger stand Feb. 24, 1988.

Ventura County has since received a judge’s permission to use DNA analysis in a second murder case, and authorities in Alameda County have permission to use it in a sexual assault case, Fulgoni said.

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Although appeals are pending, higher courts have yet to rule on the technique’s admissibility in trials.

“Once an appellate court decides this, it will eliminate the need for having all these expensive, long-winded hearings,” Fulgoni said.

One of the defendants who pleaded guilty rather than have DNA evidence potentially used against him was a Compton man accused of several rapes. The man had stubbornly insisted on a plea bargain in which he would confess to one rape in exchange for a seven-year prison sentence. But when he learned of the prosecutors’ plan to use DNA evidence, he pleaded guilty to several rapes in exchange for a 21-year sentence, Fulgoni said.

Fulgoni argues that genetic fingerprinting eventually will save taxpayers’ money. “It’s going to cause a lot more defendants who are guilty to plead guilty,” he said.

Whether the DNA evidence is allowed or not, Wilds’ trial is expected to start in the middle of this month, Kahn said. He is being held in the Los Angeles County Jail in lieu of $1 million bail.

BACKGROUND

DNA typing, sometimes called “genetic fingerprinting,” enables the genetic makeup of a suspect to be matched with tissue or fluids found at a crime scene, experts say. In September, Lynda Axell of Ventura became the first person in California to be convicted through its use. Axell’s lawyer is appealing the conviction.

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