In Rare Action, Court Rejects Guilty Finding : Murder: A federal appeals panel rules that fingerprint evidence alone was insufficient to convict a Long Beach man.

A federal appeals court in a highly unusual move Monday overturned the murder conviction of a Long Beach man, ruling that fingerprint evidence used to link him to the bludgeoning death of a shop owner was insufficient.

The decision by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals means that Melvin Mikes, 30, who is imprisoned at the Deuel Vocational Institute at Tracy, could be released soon.

Jerry A. Weil, the Los Angeles County public defender who represented Mikes during the Long Beach trial, said he was elated at the decision. “This was one of those nightmare cases. I thought it was a travesty of justice,” he said.

Jill Ishida, the state public defender who represented Mikes on appeal, called the decision “great news.”

However, David F. Glassman, who argued the case on appeal for the California attorney general’s office, said his office was disappointed and will ask for a rehearing from the full 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Mikes was convicted of murdering Harold Hansen, owner of Harold’s Fix-It Shop in downtown Long Beach, whose bludgeoned body was found by a police officer on the night of March 10, 1980.

The officer found empty jewelry boxes on the floor of the shop and discovered Hansen’s body in the basement. The police concluded that Hansen had been killed during a burglary.

For more than five years, the crime was unsolved. Then a newly installed California Department of Justice computer in Sacramento matched Mikes’ fingerprints with those found on the murder weapon, a short chrome turnstile post found next to Hansen’s body.

Mikes was arrested and convicted after a one-week trial at which he did not testify. He was sentenced to 25 years to life. His conviction was upheld by a state appeals court. The state Supreme Court declined to review it.

Mikes then sought federal court action through a writ of habeas corpus, a procedure for securing review of whether a defendant’s federal constitutional rights have been violated.

In 1989, then-U.S. District Court Judge Robert Bonner rebuffed the habeas appeal.

But a panel of three federal appeals court judges agreed unanimously that the sole evidence against Mikes--fingerprints found on the murder weapon and two other chrome posts from the same turnstile unit--was insufficient.

“We . . . hold that Mikes’ conviction violated his right to due process,” said the opinion by Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt. Circuit Judge Dorothy W. Nelson and District Judge Jack E. Tanner joined in the opinion.

“The critical issue presented by this case is whether the evidence of Mikes’ fingerprints on three posts, one of which was identified as the murder weapon, is sufficient by itself to allow a rational trier of fact to convict him of murder,” the court said.

The judges described the trial as a “fingerprint-only” case in which the prosecution’s theory was based on the premise that the defendant handled certain objects while committing the crime. In such cases, the court ruled, the record must contain sufficient evidence from which a jury could reasonably infer that the fingerprints were impressed at the time of the crime--not earlier.

“The evidence in the record is wholly insufficient to preclude the reasonable possibility that Mikes’ fingerprints were placed on the posts during the period prior to Hansen’s acquisition of them,” the judges wrote.

They noted that Hansen had acquired the posts four months before his murder at a public hardware store sale, and had kept them in his basement since then.

“The testimony in the record establishes that Mikes’ fingerprints were found on ‘ordinary’ turnstile posts--the type often used in public places, such as a grocery or other commercial store,” the judges added.

State public defender Ishida said that if the court had ruled otherwise, it would have meant that anyone whose prints had been found on the posts could have been convicted of murder.

The judges noted in their opinion that the defense had presented expert testimony that fingerprints can last indefinitely, “which is consistent with the testimony of government experts in other cases.”

The appeals court stressed that the prosecution introduced no evidence placing Mikes at the scene of the crime. They also said that none of Mikes’ fingerprints were found in the area of the burglary, that none of Mikes’ prints appeared on any of Hansen’s stolen property that was recovered and that none of Hansen’s stolen jewelry was in Mikes’ possession when he was arrested.

The standard for review in such cases was set in a 1979 Supreme Court case called Jackson versus Virginia, the judges said. That case mandates that appellate judges examine the evidence in the light most favorable to the government, and determine whether a rational jury could have found the essential elements of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt.

UC Berkeley criminal law professor Philip Johnson said it was uncommon for a federal appeals court to overturn a murder conviction on the grounds of insufficient evidence.

“It’s very unusual to see the Jackson standard applied, but this standard or any other one was meant to be applied in some cases,” Johnson said. “It’s a question of judgment based on the record.”

Loyola University Law School Professor Laurie Levinson said such a decision was “extremely rare.”

She said the decision “is like an acquittal,” unlike a reversal on technical procedural grounds where the state could secure a retrial.