No male DNA was recovered from clothing worn by Jill Marker on the night she was assaulted in the Silk Plant Forest store in 1995, Winston-Salem Police Chief Scott Cunningham said yesterday.
The clothing had been sent to LabCorp of America in Research Triangle Park in hopes that new "touch" analysis techniques might result in retrieving and identifying DNA samples from anyone who touched the clothing.
Kalvin Michael Smith was convicted in 1997 of beating Marker and is serving 23 to 29 years in prison, but over the past few years, the case has come under scrutiny from the Innocence Project at Duke University, which took up Smith's case. In addition, a five-part series in the Winston-Salem Journal in 2004 raised many questions about the case, as did the Silk Plant Forest Citizens Review Committee, which re-examined the police investigation in 2008 and 2009.
Smith is appealing his conviction in federal courts after state courts rejected his efforts to win a new trial.
"Once again, there is no physical evidence tying Kalvin Smith to this crime," said David Pishko, Smith's attorney. He said he is in the process of taking a closer look at the test results.
The Winston-Salem Police Department is conducting an internal review to see whether to reopen the police investigation, and the testing of the clothing was part of that review. Cunningham said yesterday that the department is continuing that review and hopes to present a "comprehensive report" in the late fall.
Earlier testing of evidence by the State Bureau of Investigation only yielded links to Marker and none to Smith or anyone else, including Kenneth Lamoureaux, an early suspect in the case. Police sent the evidence in March after discovering during the review that there was evidence in the case, including blood on Marker's shirt and on a cardboard box, that had never been tested for the presence of DNA.
The police never found any physical evidence linking Smith to the crime. On the night he was arrested, he gave police a statement in which he said he was at the scene but wasn't the attacker. Smith recanted that statement, and prosecutors ended up not using the statement during the trial.
Cunningham said yesterday that the new results don't explain why no DNA was recovered. It could be that the DNA was present on the clothing and then deteriorated over the years, or it could be that the clothing never had any male DNA, he said.
"These results do not prove or disprove the guilt or innocence of any person associated with this crime," Cunningham said.
But Jim Coleman, a faculty adviser to the Duke Innocence Project, said yesterday that the fact that no male DNA was found gives credence to the recantation of a key witness in the case.
Eugene Littlejohn testified at Smith's 1997 trial that he accompanied Smith to the store and that Smith at one point grabbed Marker by the arms. More recently, Littlejohn was one of several witnesses who gave affidavits to Smith's attorneys recanting their statements, saying that police had coerced the statements.
Coleman said that there were two reasons to do the touch DNA analysis. One was to show that Smith never touched Marker, and the other was to determine who actually assaulted Marker and if that person left DNA, he said.
"The absence of DNA may be further evidence that supports Littlejohn's recantation," Coleman said.
He said that Kendra Montgomery-Blinn, the executive director of the N.C. Innocence Inquiry Commission, had suggested that a different private laboratory be used for the touch DNA analysis that might yield better results. Coleman said he sent an e-mail to Cunningham asking to use that lab instead of LabCorp, but he never got a response.
Cunningham said that police considered Coleman's suggestion but determined that LabCorp was the best place to do the testing. There are no plans to do any additional testing, he said.
Coleman said he hopes that police are examining the case with an open mind.
"That's really the question," he said. "I think if that's what they do, there's no way they can conclude the investigation they did adequately identified the right person."
mhewlett@wsjournal.com
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