DNA testing in the Hank Skinner case in Texas

[Chris_Halkides]

Hank Skinner was convicted of killing his girlfriend and her two adult sons on the night of New Year's Eve in 1993. He said that he was passed out on the couch. Skinner wished to have someone test knives and a jacket found at the scene at the time of his trial, among other items, but his attorney advised against it. Texas passed a law allowing for post-conviction DNA testing in cases like this, but until now the state has fought against DNA testing in this instance.
EDT
There is a short thread on the mitochondrial DNA evidence in this case here.

 

[Beerina]

When DNA as evidence came online, "common sense" said people on death row would call for it left and right. In fact, very very few did, because the vast majority of cases were solid and it would just seal their fate even more.

So when someone on death row calls for it, they should get it, because they must know they are innocent. If they know they are guilty, evidence shows they will not ask for it.


This is why prosecutors and states are asses possible murderers for getting in the way of DNA requests.

 

[BenBurch]

When DNA as evidence came online, "common sense" said people on death row would call for it left and right. In fact, very very few did, because the vast majority of cases were solid and it would just seal their fate even more.

So when someone on death row calls for it, they should get it, because they must know they are innocent. If they know they are guilty, evidence shows they will not ask for it.


This is why prosecutors and states are asses possible murderers for getting in the way of DNA requests.

We totally agree on this.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

a crooked road

The legal blog Simple Justice has covered the problems in finding the correct legal path to obtaining testing several times, including here and here:
"Yet the justices leave him [Skinner's lawyer] no choice. Consider the statements by Alito and Kennedy, apparently undisturbed by the big question as they grasp the details close to their chest. So what if an innocent man is executed, as long as you aren't abusing the generosity of §1983 to get around the limitations of §2255? These are two of the nine most powerful people in our tripartite government, and the potential execution of an innocent doesn't seem to register."

 

[fuelair]

Currently Law and Justice tend to be complete strangers. Amazingly, this is coincident with conservative packed courts.

 

[Rolfe]

The legal blog Simple Justice has covered the problems in finding the correct legal path to obtaining testing several times, including here and here:
"Yet the justices leave him [Skinner's lawyer] no choice. Consider the statements by Alito and Kennedy, apparently undisturbed by the big question as they grasp the details close to their chest. So what if an innocent man is executed, as long as you aren't abusing the generosity of §1983 to get around the limitations of §2255? These are two of the nine most powerful people in our tripartite government, and the potential execution of an innocent doesn't seem to register."

That's an absolute cracker. I may steal it. I'm sick and tired of hearing that a properly constituted court found someone guilty according to due process, and that's that. The fact that "due process" was a jackass doesn't seem to matter.

At least if new evidence is produced, it's something to bring to court. Revisiting an existing judgement on the grounds that the reasoning is batsqueak crazy doesn't seem to be allowed. Even new evidence is examined in the light of the original batsqueak crazy reasoning, and if it doesn't tear apart the faulty reasoning in just the right place, it may not prove to be enough.

And I agree with Beerina too. This is unusual, so make the most of it.

Rolfe.

 

[BStrong]

I believe that in any capital case where there is un-impeachable DNA evidence, that evidence should be primary and required in conviction or exoneration.

 

[Kaosium]

The sad tragedy with this one, and the reason they're not inclined to give him the DNA testing, is they'll just say Hank Skinner just conspired with the (likely) actual murderer!

Quick overview off the top of my head: It was a New Year's Eve party (December 31st, 1993--I remember what I was doing that date myself!) and he'd passed out, having inadvertently imbibed a significant amount of codeine, which he was allergic to. Doctors testified he'd have been practically comatose with that amount in his system, (and he looked it too--there's pictures!) but they didn't have another suspect so they pretended that didn't matter.

Later on a more likely suspect was revealed, but said suspect killed himself in a drunken-driving accident so isn't alive to answer questions. Texas is claiming if the DNA comes back positive for that guy, it won't prove anything but that the guy who died must have conspired with Hank Skinner! Evidence against Hank Skinner? Outside the part they just made up (for a motive) it amounts to simply that he was there, passed out like the doctors said.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

The jacket

Later on a more likely suspect was revealed, but said suspect killed himself in a drunken-driving accident so isn't alive to answer questions. Texas is claiming if the DNA comes back positive for that guy, it won't prove anything but that the guy who died must have conspired with Hank Skinner! Evidence against Hank Skinner? Outside the part they just made up (for a motive) it amounts to simply that he was there, passed out like the doctors said.

Kaosium,

Working from memory, his widow identified the jacket as looking like one of his. The suspect was seen washing out his truck on New Year's Day. Two of the victims were stabbed to death, and you don't test the knives? His court-appointed lawyer (who had left public office under a cloud) was paid something like $75,000, which was not typical for the county. I don't think that his first lawyer deliberately sabotaged Skinner's defense, but I don't think he tried very hard, either. The Skeptical Juror has a long series on this case.

 

[Rolfe]

The sad tragedy with this one, and the reason they're not inclined to give him the DNA testing, is they'll just say Hank Skinner just conspired with the (likely) actual murderer!

Texas is claiming if the DNA comes back positive for that guy, it won't prove anything but that the guy who died must have conspired with Hank Skinner! Evidence against Hank Skinner? Outside the part they just made up (for a motive) it amounts to simply that he was there, passed out like the doctors said.

This sounds horribly familiar. Evidence which, if it had been considered by the original court in the first instance along with the rest of it would almost certainly have been enough to secure an acquittal, is waved aside on appeal on some pretext or other.

Appeals seem to start with a presumption of guilt. There really is a case for a complete do-over of the trial from a presumption of innocence (like in Italy but NOT the way they do it please....). A genuine re-trial.

The funny thing is, the "appeals" I've been involved in in English magistrates courts turned out actually to be complete de novo trials. Nobody looked at the previous trial, it was just, OK tell us all about it, once again. I never asked the right people what was going on there.

The scary thing even there, a magistrates' bench adjudicating on whether a dog owner had treated his dog's arthritis as prescribed by the vet, was the palpable presumption of guilt on the part of the magistrates. Judgemental sanctimonious pompous posers, the lot of them.

Rolfe.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

conspiracies

Appeals seem to start with a presumption of guilt. There really is a case for a complete do-over of the trial from a presumption of innocence (like in Italy but NOT the way they do it please....). A genuine re-trial.

Rolfe,

I agree. What was said here about Billy Wayne Cope's false confession is apropos. "The presumption of regularity is a convicted felon’s worse nightmare. An accused is innocent until proven guilty-but only before trial. Once convicted, the presumption of innocence is replaced with the presumption of guilt. Reviewing courts assume that the underlying proceeding was conducted in a fair manner and in accordance with the law. The jury’s verdict is near sacrosanct and rarely disturbed on appeal or in any subsequent proceeding. The problem is that sometimes juries make mistakes. Lies are sometimes believed; the truth, likewise, is occasionally obscured or ignored. The appellate courts are not designed to correct this type of error and will rarely substitute their judgment with that of the jury’s. Unfortunately, when errors of this sort are made, the wrongfully convicted have little recourse." In the Cope case the DNA evidence points to James Sanders, and the prosecutors invented a conspiracy between Cope and Sanders. Therefore, a fear that the prosecution will invent a conspiracy between Hank Skinner and his girlfriend's uncle (the man who died in the auto accident) is well-founded, unfortunately.

 

[lane99]

The Rudy Guede defense...

"I was right there in the room as the murders were happening. I fled the scene and hid from police afterwards. But don't let that fool you, I'm really innocent. Emmis! It was a bad man who crawled in the window who actually committed the crime". In the case of Skinner, he'd have you believe the real killer was a senior citizen midget. Nice touch.

It's a pity that triple murderers like Hank Skinner get the chance to burn up limited resources that could be better directed to cases where there:

a) is some legitimate doubt about guilt
b) where the testing has some reasonable prospect of clarifying the matter

Neither applies here. But the squeaky wheel gets the grease, I suppose.

 

[theprestige]

The way I see it, if you have evidence that implicates one person, and it is good evidence--good enough to convince a grand jury, good enough to convince a judge, and good enough to convince a jury...

... Then DNA from another person can only implicate another person. It can't exonerate the first person. It can't make all that other evidence go away, or not mean anything. The first person is still implicated by all that good evidence.

So when it comes to post-trial DNA evidence, we're really just talking about a few fringe cases where a) the evidence implicating the first person really wasn't all that good, and b) DNA from someone else really does somehow exonerate the first person.

For example, if seventeen credible witnesses all swore they saw the whole thing and there was only one rapist, and circumstantial evidence implicates one person, but DNA taken from the sperm sample implicates another person.

 

[BenBurch]

The way I see it, if you have evidence that implicates one person, and it is good evidence--good enough to convince a grand jury, good enough to convince a judge, and good enough to convince a jury...

... Then DNA from another person can only implicate another person. It can't exonerate the first person. It can't make all that other evidence go away, or not mean anything. The first person is still implicated by all that good evidence.

So when it comes to post-trial DNA evidence, we're really just talking about a few fringe cases where a) the evidence implicating the first person really wasn't all that good, and b) DNA from someone else really does somehow exonerate the first person.

For example, if seventeen credible witnesses all swore they saw the whole thing and there was only one rapist, and circumstantial evidence implicates one person, but DNA taken from the sperm sample implicates another person.

If the evidence was blood or semen, and if that evidence was significant to the jury, and if the blood type matched and was presented to the jury, but when the blood or semen was sequenced it was some other person's, then at the very least you need to re-try without that evidence, or if that evidence is brought in, you need to be able to show that the crime was in concert with a second person.

 

[Beerina]

I have no problem with people on death row burning up resources. Waste is not important compared to a mistake. It's also small overall in the prison/prosecution budget.


"Oops, we killed someone innocent. Ah, well. At least we saved a few million out of billions."

Is that an acceptable thought?


I know he could be gaming the system. But probably not, for reasons I stated. He would know if his DNA would be on the knives or in the hair in her hands or under her nails.

So therefore he knows it isn't. Why? Is it the dead retired midget's?

Suppose it is. Who cares what he'd have you believe -- test it.

 

[Draca]

The way I see it, if you have evidence that implicates one person, and it is good evidence--good enough to convince a grand jury, good enough to convince a judge, and good enough to convince a jury...

... Then DNA from another person can only implicate another person. It can't exonerate the first person. It can't make all that other evidence go away, or not mean anything. The first person is still implicated by all that good evidence.

So when it comes to post-trial DNA evidence, we're really just talking about a few fringe cases where a) the evidence implicating the first person really wasn't all that good, and b) DNA from someone else really does somehow exonerate the first person.

For example, if seventeen credible witnesses all swore they saw the whole thing and there was only one rapist, and circumstantial evidence implicates one person, but DNA taken from the sperm sample implicates another person.

I don't know if Hank Skinner is innocent or guilty, but I see no reason not to do DNA testing on all the evidence before killing the man.

One thing to be weary of in this case is a recanted testimony from his ex-girlfriend. Here is the copy of the affidavit: http://www.injustice-anywhere.org/Reed.pdf . The National Registry of Exonorations has found that perjury or false accusation has been a factor in 51% of wrongful convictions. That alone should set off a warning bell about this case. http://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/exonerations_us_1989_2012_summary.pdf

The amount of evidence in this case that has NOT been tested at all is quite large.

The evidence that has been left untested or completely ignored is shocking. It was never revealed at trial that two of the murder weapons could not be traced to Skinner. Bloody fingerprints found on a pick ax handle and knife did not belong to Skinner, yet they were not discussed at trial. A second knife was also recovered from the scene, along with a bloody towel and jacket. None of these items have been tested.

Blood and skin were found under the fingernails of Busby indicating that she put up a fight. Tests were never conducted on Busby's fingernail clippings. Hair found in Busby's hands along with vaginal swabs taken at the time of her autopsy have also never been tested.

There is also another suspect. The victim's uncle, Robert Donnell. According to eyewitness reports, Twila Busby had been harassed at a New Year's eve party by Donnell shortly before she was murdered. Another witness also said the untested jacket looks like one her uncle owned.

I think you are definitely wrong that if the evidence was good enough to convince a judge and jury it has to be 100% solid. That is an idealized view of the justice system. It simply is not true.

If DNA testing is done and comes back with her Uncle or an unknown males DNA on the items and none of Hank Skinner's I think it is possible his conviction could be overturned.

If you look at another Texan case, that of Michael Morton, he requested DNA testing be done on a bloody bandana found at the crime scene. After years of denial it was finally approved and completely exonorated him when the bandana came back with DNA of another man who had gone on to kill yet another woman. The DA John Bradley who denied the DNA testing for years was just booted out of office by voters based largely on his actions. The Prosecutor in the case also withheld evidence from the defense.

I'm very pleased that the court is going to do the DNA testing before executing Hank Skinner.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Hank Skinner is not Rudy Guede

"I was right there in the room as the murders were happening. I fled the scene and hid from police afterwards. But don't let that fool you, I'm really innocent. Emmis! It was a bad man who crawled in the window who actually committed the crime". In the case of Skinner, he'd have you believe the real killer was a senior citizen midget. Nice touch.

It's a pity that triple murderers like Hank Skinner get the chance to burn up limited resources that could be better directed to cases where there:

a) is some legitimate doubt about guilt
b) where the testing has some reasonable prospect of clarifying the matter

Neither applies here. But the squeaky wheel gets the grease, I suppose.

lane99,

Hank had a reason to be at Twila’s home on the night of the murders, but Rudy Guede had no business being at Meredith’s flat. IIRC Hank had her blood on him, but so did Elwin, one of her sons. I have heard various accounts of how big Robert Donnell was; one description of him is large and another is that he was 5' 0' (I never heard that he was a midget before). I think he was 63 years old, but to the best of my knowledge it is not disputed that he was handy with a knife, and some say he was…um…overly fond of his niece.

Mr. Skinner is supposed to have flown into a homicidal rage when someone gave his girlfriend a goodnight kiss, hardly a convincing motive. Earlier in the evening Howard Mitchell had tried to rouse him, but Skinner was out cold from the vodka and codeine. He was estimated to have a BAC of 0.21% at the time of the murders, not counting the effect of the codeine. Given this information, it is hard to see how he could have killed three people. One of the witnesses against him recanted. His attorney had been a former prosecutor who prosecuted Skinner previously. The attorney was paid $86,000 to defend him, a very unusual sum by Texas standards. I am not saying that his attorney tried to sabotage his case, but I am saying that his attorney made an extremely poor decision to override Hank’s wishes about testing the items in question.

The Skeptical Juror wrote, “Whoever put the items in the trash bag left a bloody handprint on the bag. That print was tested against Hank Skinner but not against Robert Donnell. Since the print did not belong to Hank Skinner, he was almost certainly not the person who wiped down that bloody knife with that dishtowel.”

 

[Rolfe]

I think you are definitely wrong that if the evidence was good enough to convince a judge and jury it has to be 100% solid. That is an idealized view of the justice system. It simply is not true.

That definitely needs repeating. If there is important evidence the jury (and judge) were not aware of at the original trial, how can anyone declare that that evidence wouldn't have altered their view of a case? How often in normal life do we come to what we consider a pretty certain view about something, only to find out more information and declare, "well, if I'd only known that...."?

Happens all the time. That's why the switch to the presumption of guilt at an appeal is so pernicious. There may be evidence which would have tipped the balance well into the "reasonable doubt" category when viewed with a presumption of innocence, which nevertheless is dismissed as not weighty enough to reverse the decision when viewed from a presumption of guilt. I suspect that happens quite often in appeals.

Rolfe.

 

[lane99]

Par for the course

...The Skeptical Juror wrote, “Whoever put the items in the trash bag left a bloody handprint on the bag...Since the print did not belong to Hank Skinner, he was almost certainly not the person who wiped down that bloody knife with that dishtowel.”

I'm glad you choose to highlight this one particular point. As it amply illustrates how deceitful Hank Skinner and his supporters are.

There is NO bloody handprint on the trash bag. That's nothing but a shameless lie. And simply the sort of dishonesty that guilty people and their patrons resort to when the truth ain't working out so well for them.

Now, speaking of the truth: though not on the trash bag, there were indeed a number of bloody prints found throughout the crime scene that were matched to one particular individual. Care to guess who that individual is? No, I didn't think you would.

 

[Twiler]

I'm glad you choose to highlight this one particular point. As it amply illustrates how deceitful Hank Skinner and his supporters are.

There is NO bloody handprint on the trash bag. That's nothing but a shameless lie. And simply the sort of dishonesty that guilty people and their patrons resort to when the truth ain't working out so well for them.

Now, speaking of the truth: though not on the trash bag, there were indeed a number of bloody prints found throughout the crime scene that were matched to one particular individual. Care to guess who that individual is? No, I didn't think you would.

Did you testify at the trial?